[zfedoran]

These cars will likely have many sensors of different types at overlapping locations, its not likely to keep going if all are completely unusable.

But I wonder about the snow though. How does the car know where to go when there are no identifying lane features? Maybe its not as hard of a problem as I believe it to be?

[tannedNerd]

How does a human do it? It's extremely hard but recognizing landmarks like a guard rail or plow markers would be possible. Or maybe self driving cars will apply a sane approach and stay off the streets in bad weather unlike human piloted vehicles. (There is a whole other rant about letting employees work from on bad snow days)

[scarmig]

I really don't get these questions. "How will the car drive in whiteout conditions where the road is frozen over and not at all visible?" Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over.

For substantially less crazy conditions, you can infer where the lanes would be by (a) looking at the spots of the road you can see, (b) prior knowledge of the road from experience, and (c) looking at oncoming cars and the flow of traffic, and driving in a way that doesn't surprise them. Though it's likely the case that you shouldn't be driving in these conditions anyway.

[heywire]

You must not live somewhere that gets a lot of snow :) For those of us that do, sometimes driving conditions are much less than ideal, even unsafe. Several times per winter I have to drive home from work on unplowed roads. As you put it, I have prior knowledge of the road (maybe precise GPS will help here?), and I can figure out where it is safe to drive based on tire tracks. I guess these will just be places that you probably won't have one of these vehicles (just as you wouldn't ride your motorcycle in such weather).

[randomdata]

> Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over.

You mean carefully get to the nearest settlement as soon as possible? Some of these storms can last for days at a time. Stopping to wait it out in the middle of nowhere, especially if you don't have a full tank of fuel to keep the car warm for extended periods, is a pretty scary situation.

[scarmig]

Hmmm. If the car decided, before your trip started, that it's too dangerous for anyone to drive where you want to go because of possible weather and environmental conditions mid-route, would that be useful or enraging?

[randomdata]

I imagine a bit of both. Getting caught in a snow storm is a pretty horrible experience, and I would gladly stay home knowing I would have otherwise ended up in one. But at the same time the forecasting isn't all that great, so often the storms don't amount to anything, and you would have been perfectly fine to be out there. Sometimes the storms even come up without any warning (most of the snow we get – especially that which causes driving issues – is from the lake, not the clouds). Having to essentially hibernate in the winter because the car is always erring on the side of caution could become pretty enraging.

[ocdtrekkie]

As haywire said, if you live where it snows, you drive regardless of whether or not you can see the road. I got a job to do, computers don't fix themselves, and my job is necessary even if the weather sucks outside.

While I think it's plausible to teach a self-driving car to drive in snow (like I do, generally following in the tracks of the cars ahead of me), I honestly think this is one of the best justifications that cars should continue to have steering wheels and pedals: Because automated snow driving is going to take a lot longer to become a solved problem than fair weather driving.