[Out_of_Characte]

A car changing lanes does indeed remove stopping distance. But thats also something human drivers are naturally more capable of understanding than waymo. It shouldn't have mattered where a vehicle is on the road. Any human is able to predict if a weirdly loaded vehicle making a turn has a chance of invading their lane and/or stopping distance. Its a complex problem for sure but that also shows that you need absolute proof that the software is able to generalise the problem. Especially if you want self driving cars to respect flow of traffic over stopping distance.

Even if your software is as good as it can be, I doubt you'll be able to get them to recognise how to resolve deadlocks. Which would also involve severe hindrance to emergency vehicles.