[NhanH]

I think he meant that instead of following deterministic rule (ie stop sign == stop), the car can take into account other factors, and make the actions with the best probability to not cause a disaster.

And keep in mind that the world in which self-driving cars are dominant is very and much different than the world we're living right now (as far as transportation are concern). Stop signs are meant to be read for human, car don't actually have to care about it. How about instead of stop sign at crossroad, we have some devices that can monitor the incoming traffic, and relay that information to the car? (I'd say that the car can even communicate with each other by themselves - but that approach has a host of other problems too).

Honestly, I'd say the main problem in a world of self-driving car are other human-driven cars: the self-driving car has no idea what the human would do, and the human has no idea what the automated car would do.