Why should lidar be a requirement when that's not a requirement for humans to be able to drive? The goal is to reduce traffic fatalities, humans are not reliable, if you say we can't have automation until its 100% perfect, then you are actively choosing to have more traffic fatalities.
This is a bad argument because humans use two eyes that move constantly in unison, have massively higher dynamic range than any digital camera, and can accurately measure distance in a fraction of a second by changing their focus distance. A web cam really can't replace human sight, if it was two very high speed camersa that moved like human eyes than your argument would stand, but it is not!
99.99% of daytime highway dashcam frames don't include a firetruck stopped in the lane, dealing with an accident.
But let's say, hypothetically, that a self-driving car accelerated into a clearly visible, stationary firetruck in clear daylight. Despite being 99.99% perfect.
Legislators might feel in order to be an above-average driver the vehicle shouldn't hit any clearly visible stationary objects in clear daylight, because the median human driver doesn't do that.
Depends, is Tesla currently as good as Waymo? I don't think the OP was arguing for perfection, i think they were recognizing the current state of everything. Our ability to make AI as good as human with as limited sensors as humans is not great, currently. Throw in more sensors though, and you can offset deficiencies in human-visible-only AI detection.
To me, more sensors means faster implementation. Quicker to get on roads. Less total deaths. At least in theory, and in what successes i'm seeing.
