> Google maps already accounts for changes in traffic patterns and actively detects road closures, both based on municipal announcements and traffic flow data.

> Google maps already accounts for changes in traffic patterns and actively detects road closures, both based on municipal announcements and traffic flow data. Sure, but Maps did try to send me the wrong way down a one way street last week, and through a closed tunnel last night. It's excellent technology, I don't mean to mock, but it's not perfect - situational info is going to have to override map info. I think the question is less whether self-driving systems will ever be right and more what they'll do when they (like humans) are inevitably wrong. Driving in major cities often means breaking normal traffic laws because construction, police guidance, or some other circumstance means there is no legal way to progress. That's the sort of problem that puts L5 vastly further out than this. What does your car do when a traffic cop waves it through a red light, or someone rear-ends it and needs to meet you at a crash reporting zone half a mile down the highway?