I don&#x27;t think you seem to understand how self driving cars work, or even how computers work.
Firstly, the car itself need not have traversed the same road for it to have full information. It can be gathered from collective data from all the self driving cars. That means even if one car went through that intersection, it has some relevant data on it.
Secondly, you&#x27;re handwaving that humans are better with the &quot;use best judgement&quot;, which is pretty much unquantifiable. Not to mention humans have &quot;used best judgement&quot; and still managed to crash into things. How are you sure that the algorithmic path taken by the onboard computer isn&#x27;t far superior to best judgement? We already know that computers outclass us in terms of reaction times, why not this?
Thirdly, you don&#x27;t need to store terabytes of data to do anything in the same way you don&#x27;t need to download the entire database of HN to browse the front page. Localized data would be sufficient. Even if everything is offline, the car would most likely just revert to its learning mode .. which is how most of the Google cars that are on the streets currently started off.
Lastly, you&#x27;re right we aren&#x27;t 100% there when it comes to distinguishing zebras and couches. But for self driving cars, we don&#x27;t need that. What we need is object detection, its velocity relative to us, and data on where its heading. All of which we have become pretty good at.