I think if I was going to ride in a self-driving car I&#x27;d want it designed like a hard realtime system where it is guaranteed to sample the road at X rate or whatever.  Most of the time it won&#x27;t matter at all and doing something adaptive would be fine.<p>But when the cameras go out completely (or get blinded or whatever) then you could end up with a really degenerate case where the software can&#x27;t keep up with the car&#x27;s motion and it freaks out and crashes (literally or figuratively).<p>Prior to suggesting that this couldn&#x27;t happen, or would be extremely unlikely to happen, please remember the results of the Toyota &quot;unintended acceleration&quot; investigation: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9643204" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9643204</a>