[bigtones]

I agree with this. Humans have a tough time driving in the snow for quite a few reasons, but the ability of our eyes (which are fantastic technology) to differentiate objects covered in white snow is a big part of it, so camera's and CV are going to have a much tougher time that the combination of human brain and eye.

On the other hand, driving in the snow is a very very small portion of most driving commutes, so maybe the solution is for the car to automatically turn off autonomous driving in the snow. The warmer half the world would not care it does not work in the snow.

[sudosysgen]

You can make cameras that can differentiate objects covered in white snow.

It's just going to be quite expensive, you would need quite good dynamic range and resolution, and I'd guess depth from de focus and parallax helps.

But that's with ~40 bits per pixel of dynamic range (17-18 effective bits per channel), at fairly high resolutions.