I think a better question may be "Is machine learning the best way to solve autonomous driving"? Tasks that are very difficult for a ML / CV system to solve co

I think a better question may be "Is machine learning the best way to solve autonomous driving"? Tasks that are very difficult for a ML / CV system to solve could become trivial if we could rely on world around us to have the right sensors embedded. In your example if moving vehicles on the street had beacons on them, you would not had to rely on ML to determine if you are safe. Of course, we do not have access to this kind of data currently and so we have no choice but to rely on ML / CV / AI. But once upon a time there were no highways for cars either. Society as a whole decided that building these highways was worth the investment. I believe that society will slowly evolve towards building the kind of infrastructure that makes autonomous driving much easier. So ML may only be needed to make the ROI on this kind of infra clearer to more people.