>The best cameras are surely better than most peoples' eyes these days.

Not on all metrics, especially not simultaneously. The dynamic range of human eyes, for example, is extremely high.

The front camera Tesla is using is very good with this. You can drive with the sun shining directly into it and it will still detect everything 99% of the time, at least with my older model 3. Way better than me stuck looking at the pavement directly in front the car.

AFAIK there is also more than one front camera. Why would anyone try to do it all with one or two camera sensors like humans do it?

It's important to remember that the cameras Tesla are using are optimized for everything but picture quality. They are not just taking flagship phone camera sensors and sticking them into cars. That's why their dashcam recordings look so bad (to us) if you've ever seen them.

Well, Teslas use low cost consumer cameras. Not DSLRs. Bad framerate, bad resolution and bad dynamic range. Very far from human vision and easily blinded and completely washed out by sudden shifts in light.

I’m consistently surprised by how my Tesla can see a traffic light with the sun directly behind it. They seem to have solved the washout problem in practice.

You can compare the size of the cameras used in Tesla with the size (of the lenses at least) on the Waymo rig, and they do not look like they’re in the same league, optically.