Like the IoT, self-driving cars are premature and poorly thought out. They're more about fueling investor enthusiasm than actually delivering a viable service.
What I don't think is visible from the video is whether the engineer or safety driver in the vehicle are in control. According to Uber's release, every self-driving vehicle in their fleet has a safety driver and an engineer that can take manual control of the vehicle. While it's definitely possible that this was a mistake with the AI, I don't think we should rule out the possibility that this was human bravado/impatience.
I see nothing wrong with this. The AI appears to have figured out why the northeast has less traffic than SoCal while having less road infrastructure.