[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.