Well yes, it's the same sort of argument that teachers jokingly make, saying school would be so nice without all the students. It's been suspected for some tim

Well yes, it's the same sort of argument that teachers jokingly make, saying school would be so nice without all the students. It's been suspected for some time that a mixed environment of autonomous vehicles and human-operated everything else (including pedestrians) will be the worst of both worlds, as like you said, those algorithms will be face with un-anticipated inputs. The problem is, while cars we can automate way (given enough time), pedestrians we can't, unless we're willing to expend even more money in re-engineering our infrastructure to segregate road traffic entirely, keeping the contact surface to as minimal as possible -- only every home, every workplace, every commercial establishment, every rest stop, and every place vehicular maintenance is done. While this goal tends to appear in 'next city' brainstorming, it's easy to see why it's a challenge.