>>>Whenever someone says they have the software which will handle ALL cases, I generally think it's ALL covered by a try-catch. Well, I don't like the catch.
>>
>>In the short term SD cars will require that humans take over in tricky situations. As machines learn those will become fewer and fewer.
>>
>>The "mayday" scenario was not for potholes or manhole covers any more than a human would consider those emergencies. As for the rest of those scenarios, ask Google. If you don't like the answer, ask again 6 months from now. Rinse & repeat.
>
>That's the trouble. It's covering scenarios. A finite list of them. When the number of scenarios covered reaches 90% of the statistical sample, the development will stop because there won't be any profit, any new market to be gained by covering the remaining 10%. They'll simply declare victory and move to the more profitable pursuit of cutting costs to the existing models' production, removing features which are too complicated for the 90% of the human observer-drivers and add those features which may prompt them to upgrade to a newer version of the car's OS. Some of which may introduce new ad spaces (last year I rode a cab which was running local ads on its comm/GPS - if you're ever in Zrenjanin, don't ride the cab responding to 588-888).
>
>>Many years ago I programmed a CNC mill to carve my initials into a block of acrylic, and saw a pen plotter in action for the first time. I marveled at the inhuman speed and precision.
>
>Care to count all the decisions that the plotter had to make in unexpected situations?

You're making a couple of assumptions:

- that a machine's set of responses to scenarios is and always will be a subset of any human's
- that machine learning can't infer general principles in the same or a superior manner to humans

About 6 months ago I saw a cool driving tip. If you're waiting to turn left at an intersection, leave your front wheels pointed straight ahead until you make the turn. If you turn them to the left in advance, and then you're struck from behind, you get pushed into the path of oncoming traffic.

I've been driving a long time, and I'm objectively a better than average driver, but that tip was new to me. OTOH there's a good chance it's already programmed into SD vehicles; if not it's easily added, then with an OTA update they never forget and never make that mistake.

SD cars can "relentlessly pursue perfection"; humans, not so much - no motivation, for the vast majority.