My impression from at least the google cars is that they aren't relying on map data to find signs and signals, though they might update that data from the cars

My impression from at least the google cars is that they aren't relying on map data to find signs and signals, though they might update that data from the cars so they can reduce processing time later. I'd also expect any accident to end up worldwide news simply because it's the first ever of it's kind. Same thing happened with the first car accident in the world, it happened in 1891 in Ohio [1]. I'd imagine that #2 will take longer to take care of properly, but with the traffic and accidentent and road closure monitoring that goes on now I'm going to bet that it'll at least be kind of decent, I'm actually more worried that it won't be able to follow detours properly and cause gridlock around construction areas during the transition from human driven cars to driver-less. [1] http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/World's_First_Automobile_Accident?rec=2596 http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/World's_First_Automobile...