> driving in an uncontrolled environment is really a general AI problem

Is it? Unless you are talking about NASCAR, an adversarial game where rational agents compete for road space, driving is essentially a physics problem: maintain a speed and direction that does not exceed the vehicle's ability to correct them so as to avoid any stationary or mobile obstacle.

In this case, the vehicle was accelerated to a speed (72mph) that far exceeded its safety speed against oncoming stationary barriers (0mph).

I concede that discerning what is an obstacle and what is drivable road surface is a hard computer vision problem, hence the tendency to simplify it using 3D data, radar/lidar etc. But still, not quite general AI.