I understand you want to refute/diminish the parent comment on finite automata, but I think you are providing a straw man argument. The parent comment does provide an interesting, factual statement. I don't believe finite state automata are at all close in complexity to real-world self-driving car systems (or even a portion thereof). Your closing statement is also dismissive and unconstructive.

I believe finite state modeling is used at NASA, A google search brings up a few references (that I'm probably not qualified to speak to), and I also remember hearing/reading a lecture on how they use them to make completely verifiable programs but can't find the exact one at the moment.

I wasn't making a strawman, I was making a parody of his strawman. I thought it's obvious, since I was making an analogy, and it was an analogy to his argument.

I should have been more clear perhaps: many regexes are capable of being verified with 100% certainty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson%27s_construction

But not all regexes (eg, those using PCRE extensions afaik) are amenable to such a treatment. Those you just tend to hope they work.