"If a lidar system ever uses a laser with a higher safety class, then it could pose a serious hazard for your eyes. However, as it stands, according to current information and practices, lidar manufacturers use class 1 eye-safe (near) infrared laser diodes."
Like on a busy highway.
What if you are hit all day long, for hours, every single day?
History is replete with studies which were used to presume different exposures would be fine.
Imagine pointing a laser at something more than five feet distant the size of an eyeball and then getting another laser to point at the same spot at the same time. And then another five. And those lasers are all attached to cars moving and the eyeball is moving too...
On a side note, you eyes are hit with more powerful and full-spectrum radiation (from IR to UV) from a burning star every day for hours (or at least they are designed to).
Eyes fully dilated during night driving don't constrict from flashes of coherent IR radiation, though.
BTW: this is neat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanopsin