> Not to mention road obstacles, and animals (in my country moose collisions are common, and deadly).
It always fascinates me that this argument comes up from the negative side of self-driving cars pretty much every time, but it's actually the poster-child reason self-driving cars are better.
A self-driving car is at least as likely to recognize a potential collision with a moose as a human is (given current sensor tech) and probably much more so since it can't be distracted.
The advantage of a full omnidirectional sensor array is that it can pay attention to the kid on the bike, the moose crossing the street, the 5 cars around you, the alien spaceship in the sky, and the kid using your bumper to accelerate his skateboard all at once (or at least in timeslices small enough to count as such). You can only pay attention to a couple of those things.