Oh, no disagreement there (though I do enjoy driving, and turning it into an optimization problem too :)). I was mostly debating the OP's claim of how to solve

Oh, no disagreement there (though I do enjoy driving, and turning it into an optimization problem too :)). I was mostly debating the OP's claim of how to solve it mathematically. With smarter, self-driving cars, it's likely enough to solve the problem "locally", for a sufficiently large definition of "local" :) I am not convinced we'll get to self-driving cars that can navigate the real world obstacles anytime soon, though. Like barrels falling off a truck in front of me on the highway. Or a sideway collision that has almost blocked the road. Unless the self-driving tech is trained in Mario Kart, it will take a while :D