A widely-held view is that self-driving cars must be able to function in an environment that doesn't cater to them. The reasoning is that world isn't willing to

A widely-held view is that self-driving cars must be able to function in an environment that doesn't cater to them. The reasoning is that world isn't willing to bear the cost of rebuilding roads around SDCs, so SDCs must adapt to roads as-is. I think there's a lot of wisdom in this, but I think the endgame might be to deviate from it a little bit. Maybe SDCs don't need to make 100% of the changes. Maybe if they can handle 99% of situations, they will have proven their usefulness, and the world will be willing to close the gap by making some changes to the road network to make the remaining 1% of situations easier on SDCs. So suppose SDCs are in regular use and make up 20% of cars on the road, but they can't handle the construction flagger. Maybe by that point the highway department would be willing to change rules about how construction crews must manage cars going through a construction site. And/or, maybe SDCs also try to avoid routes that go through construction sites. If it occasionally takes you 20 minutes longer to get to your destination because the SDC has to go the long way around, that might not be bad enough to make you give up your SDC.