[bsder]

> Instead of treating the light like a stop sign, the car remained stop. After 5 or so seconds stopped at the light (there were no other cars at the intersection), I honked at them.

There are many normal humans who don't know what to do when the traffic lights are in a non-normal situation

The difference is that once a self-driving car is programmed for what to do, it won't get it wrong again.

Self-driving cars will get continually better and will eventually surpass human drivers simply because human drivers will never improve.

[alextgordon]

It handled it completely correctly. Lights being out is an exceptional situation where the usual rules of the road are suspended.

Sometimes it means "treat it as a stop sign", but other times it means "turn the car around because ignoring the lights on this particular road would be positively suicidal". e.g. a level crossing.

Computers have no conception of danger, and so they don't get to decide what's dangerous and what's not.

[bsder]

Actually, in California, that isn't true. An intersection controlled by a traffic light converts to a 4-way stop when the traffic light is out.

However, even for your example of a level crossing, humans fail regularly. People regularly run into trains in Texas at a level crossing because the train has a long stretch of flatbed cars that someone missed at dusk or at night.

[ghshephard]

Human drivers follow a bathtub curve. Young drivers (particularly male), are very dangerous in the beginning (so much so, that their insurance rates are much higher). Drivers become more dangerous as they get older, and their reflexes, vision, situational attention/awareness decline. I think one of the best uses of self driving cars initially will be for those populations.