Drunk, inexperience, distracted and the very old are the major cause of accidents - for human drivers. But for autonomous vehicles, it’s the long tail scenari

Drunk, inexperience, distracted and the very old are the major cause of accidents - for human drivers. But for autonomous vehicles, it’s the long tail scenarios which are going to cause the problems. Weather and environmental factors will increase those long tail scenarios and tax the sensors. Notice that the human eye is amazing. Resolution is in the hundreds of millions of pixels equivalent, and yet we don’t allow drivers to have less than half the standard resolution (20/40). But, what resolution are self driving car cameras? 50 million pixels? Hardly. They’re legally blind. Human eyes are even more impressive with their dynamic range. The ability to see a deer on the side of the road while simultaneously being blinded by an oncoming cars headlights, is truly incredible. Self driving car cameras don’t have the dynamic range of a 90 year old. When one sensor is temporarily blinded by a drop of rain, how does the car react? When one sensor has failed and the other is blinded by a drop of rain? Weather causes many more problems for self driving cars, and yet Waymo is testing primarily in sunny locales during the daytime.