I hope they know that when there's a south eastern style afternoon thunderstorm that dumps several inches of rain in 20 minutes that it is best to just pull over and wait.
Just had a flashback to a near death accident in Louisiana on the highway at about 70mph this way. Cloudy no rain, pavement dry, then almost instantly a torrential downpour dumped what looked like a standing half inch of water on the road. The tires lost traction and I slid off into the median. Thankfully I the median was wide and grass and I coasted to a stop (sideways) about a yard from a tree. If you've driven I-10 through Louisiana you know what I mean.
Not sure what an autonomous car could have done in such a situation but anticipate that maybe we should preemptively pull over for a bit before it starts raining.
Hopefully any autonomous system will be able to make the call of whether it is safe to drive itself - whether because of heavy rain, blizzard, tornado etc. Some situations are just not safe to drive a car in, regardless of who's driving.
