[cmsj]

Yes! This is how a sensible driver would behave - not quite sure what's going on ahead of you? SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.

The story in the linked article about an Uber whipping through an intersection at 38mph next to two stationary lanes, seems sufficiently conclusive to me that their self-driving system is not ruled by a sense of caution.

Here in the UK, we have speed limits, but the rules of the road also call drivers to consider "appropriate speed" - you slow down in situations where you might have to react with very little warning. This ought to be extremely easy for an automated system - it can measure its braking distance with high accuracy, it can measure distances to objects around it with high accuracy, it can determine exactly which areas of the world around it it can't see, that could pose a threat with relatively low warning, so just fucking slow down.

I've long been bearish on full autonomous driving because I consider there to be so many corner cases in real world driving where ad-hoc non-verbal communication is required to solve traffic flow, that the computers would never catch up. Now I wonder if their solution is to just plough through every problem at 98% of the speed limit and then disclaim responsibility.