alt Hacker NewsRight. You know there are humans somewhere in the city who got confused or scared and mess up too. Maybe a young driver who is barely confident in the first place on a temporary permit, or just someone who doesn’t remember what you do and was already over-stressed.
Whatever, it happens.
This was a (totally unintentional) coordinated screw up causing problems all over as opposed to one small spot.
The scale makes all the difference.
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Definitely. The question then becomes how do they respond on the stimulus of other, more experienced drivers?
Eg. if they see 5 cars going around them and "solving" the intersection, do they get empowered to do the same? Or do some annoying honkers behind them make them bite the bullet and try their hand at passing it (and not to worry, other drivers will also make sure no harm comes to anyone even if you make a small mistake)? Human drivers, no matter how inexperienced, will learn on the spot. Self-driving vehicles can "learn" back in the SW department.
Yes, driving is a collaborative activity which requires that we all partner on finding most efficient patterns of traffic when traffic lights fail. Self-driving cars cannot learn on the spot, and this is the main difference between them and humans: you either have them trained on every situation, or they go into weird failure modes like this.
Was it unintentional? These systems were programmed to fall bad into "terrified 16yo/elderly lady" behavior because that's what's most legally defensible.