To me this is just one more pillar underlying my assumption that self driving cars that can be left alone on same roads as humans is a pipe dream.

Waymo might have taxis that work in nice daytime streets (but with remote “drone operators”). But dollars to doughnuts someone will try something like this on a waymo taxi the minute it hits reddit front page.

The business model of self driving cars does not include building seperated roadways and junctions. I suspect long distance passenger and light loads are viable (most highways can be expanded to have one or more robo-lanes) but cities are most likely to have drone operators keeping things going and autonomous systems for handling loss of connection etc. the business models are there - they just don’t look like KITT - sadly