LIDAR certainly can see painted information on the road (possibly better than cameras in some situations) see e.g. this [1]. They can also read some road signs

LIDAR certainly can see painted information on the road (possibly better than cameras in some situations) see e.g. this [1]. They can also read some road signs and there are proposals how to make them more readable for LIDAR. That said I don't say LIDAR is sufficient for autonomous driving, we will need a suite of sensors. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/LiDAR-point-cloud-a-highway-corridor-b-LiDAR-point-cloud-overhead-sign_fig1_325004146 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/LiDAR-point-cloud-a-high...