Incidentally, if you've ever tried driving on snow/ice/mud in a 4x4 car with fully locking differentials, you have a completely mechanical solution that beats ESP.
And FWIW, Swedish insurance agency research pointed out last year that cars with permanent 4x4 and ESP were up to 40% more likely to get into severe accidents in bad conditions, because the driver does not get the "hey, this road is slippery, better slow down" experience, so they go too fast for the prevailing conditions.
http://feed.ne.cision.com/wpyfs/00/00/00/00/00/3E/5A/A2/wkr0...
I think the previous poster was more about referencing recognition of patches of ice ahead and slowing down preemptively. This is a big issue in places with bridges, since ice can form on bridges but not the rest of the roads (since bridges aren't kept warm by the earth, the dirt under most roads acts like a heat battery). Also expecting when other drivers will slide. I've actually witnessed people getting, how would you put this, reverse-rear-ended by drivers trying to go up a hill and then sliding back down.
The challenge there of course is having the car learn to interpret the input of these sensors. But that doesn't seem like a unpassable hurdle. On the contrary, it would be pretty high on the list of things to tackle when aiming for driving in snowy weather.
(Also, as a data point, I think there was a guy who drove his Tesla with lights off, and it was able to stay within the lines)
I learned to drive on ice covered dirt roads, many times I would have liked to have the ability to asymmetrically brake. A simple 2nd order gimble would be awesome. Having a single symmetric pedal dumbs it down way too much to make a pre-programmed car vs human comparison.
Same thing goes for torque distribution.
It's generated dogma that pre-programmed devices can perform better than biological systems, so I bet my suggestion will be met with incredulity bordering on "y humans cant handle x".
Yes, I have been in that situation too.
As for brakes.. ABS is very bad at handling hard snow with a drizzle of fresh snow on top. It's nearly impossible to stop. I've had to actually turn off the engine in order to stop the car when driving (slowly) down a hill from a hotel in a certain snowy area, in order not to end up on the main road in front. That was with various rental cars (yes, I go to that place regularly in my job). The first time this happened I thought here was a technical problem with the car. So I asked around. Same experience from others. The cars vary, but they're all much worse than fully manual brakes, in certain conditions.
And then there was the time there was a reindeer (yes, a reindeer) running along the road, zig-zagging in front of the car. Snow conditions as described above. ABS refused to brake. Didn't want to switch off the engine (busy steering), so after about fifteen seconds of this I drove the car off the road instead, safely into a lot of snow.
And people want computers to drive cars, when computers can't even be used safely for brakes?
In any case, I've yet to hear about a self-driving car which can predict that another driver will get into problems in a few seconds unless I slow down or increase the speed, in order to allow a third car to adjust. This is something I see or do nearly daily, on my commute.
Its a trade off.
If I mudulate my brake lightly while threshold braking, I can usually stop 15% faster than similar application of ABS. However, when I mindlessly slam on the brakes, ABS wins by a margin of 20%.
This is not the full picture however, and better driving skills alone do not negate some abs advantage. The main one being control in Turns while braking on poor surface. Without a knack for sliding sideways around corners, ABS was clearly superior when braking during a change of heading.
That all said, I run without ABS, as it suits my personal driving abilities. This would be a mistake for most people. Fortunate for me, most performance cars afford me the option, while some others consider it a critical system, and will not even activate the power steering unless detected as working. As if steering somehow became less critical without abs.
Modern car engineering is still trying to turn a tool into an appliance, and it feels like a severe mismatch of values to me.