With the fire truck using the oncoming lane to overtake the garbage truck, and with the articles saying a human could have reversed back into the intersection to clear the lane, it sounds like the fire truck would be in the way of the autonomous car just driving forwards.
> The same thing would have happened with 2 autonomous vehicles, because neither even attempts to understand what the other is trying to do
I don't think this is true in general - they seem to rely heavily on judging the intent/target of other vehicles to predict future path and react to those possibilities.
Likely that the autonomous car A (in the position of the fire truck) would not overtake the garbage truck when it can see car B oncoming in that lane in the first place, but in the event that it does occur, car B would likely slow to prevent a potential accident (understanding car A is attempting an overtake and may continue forward) and car A would probably pull back in behind the garbage truck (understanding that it'd be in the way of car B continuing forwards).