Haha, wild. I'm sure they said in the report I heard something along the lines of handling pedestrians being an issue, but I must have just assumed that they meant that the cars didn't recognize pedestrians well enough, when in fact the problem is the opposite, they don't travel efficiently because they are always stopping for pedestrians who aren't there.
Yeah it's crazy stuff... basically, I sum up the issues right now as being "judgement" or "perception" situations. You know, basically the stuff that effs up actual drivers too. For highway/freeway/suburban you could basically drive them off the lot right now. HOWEVER...
For city driving, there are a bunch of issues... and I'll give a couple quick examples:
1. Signage: what happens when a lane is closed down for construction? Or you get to a 4-way stop with parked cars that can be interpreted as in the lane and having precedence in the pecking order? What about complex 1-way streets or poorly marked roads or detours (e.g. in DC they will often close down one side of a road and re-route both directions through one side of the street... at what point does the computer decide it's "OK" to drive on the wrong side of the road?)
2. Irregular car traffic: what happens when delivery truck throws its flashers on to unload and stops abruptly to block a lane? Does the car know to pass? What happens if you're following someone close and they stop to parallel park in a space that your car is then blocking? etc. etc. etc.
3. Pedestrians: how does your car deal with jay walkers? What if a pedestrian is standing just in the street on the corner waiting for a walk signal? What about bikers weaving in and out of traffic? What about bikers running red lights? You have to be very cautious... but when is it too cautious to function?
So I think if the lawyers can get past the liability you might see cars sooner rather than later for rolled out for auto-highway driving. They've already done millions of miles of that without incident. But city driving is just utterly complex.
