Pretty sure Teslas now do use AI to drive.

Ai can use that info too. And it doesn’t get distracted, or drink beer. Self driving cars have the potential to be much safer than humans. We don’t seem to be there yet, but we will be eventually if we don’t block progress.

Yes it is a questionable decision. But I think it wasn’t just being cheap. I think it’s because of liability for errors; when it comes to placing fault on a car in the legal system, a judge / jury is only going to look at video captures. They won’t understand the lidar data. So if the car makes a bad decision based on lidar when there’s a conflict with visual queues, it will be deemed that it made a mistake. So there’s not really any point to trying to work with the lidar data.

So would plenty of human drivers.