What improvisation is required? A traffic light being out is a standard problem with a standard solution. It's just a four-way stop.

In many versions of road rules (I don't know about California), having four vehicles stopped at an intersection without one of the four lanes having priority creates a dining philosophers deadlock, where all four vehicles are giving way to others.

Human drivers can use hand signals to resolve it, but self-driven vehicles may struggle, especially if all four lanes happens to have a self-driven vehicle arrive. Potentially if all vehicles are coordinated by the same company, they can centrally coordinate out-of-band to avoid the deadlock. It becomes even more complex if there are a mix of cars coordinated by different companies.

That only works if everyone else also treats it as a four way stop. Which they don't, unfortunately.

Yes, especially in a city like San Francisco where so many cultures come together: the Prius culture, the BMW culture, the Subaru culture, etc.

To be fair 'common sense' and 'many people have been shouting it' about technical matters have a long history of being hilariously wrong. Like claims that trains would cause organ damage to their riders from going at the blistering speed of either 35 or 50 mph, IIRC. Or about manned flight being impossible. Common sense would tell you that launching a bunch of broadcasting precise clocks into orbit wouldn't be usable to determine the distance, and yet here we are with GPS.

If you are driving a car on a public street and your solution to getting confused is stopping your car in the middle of the road wherever this confusion happens to arise, and sitting there for however long you are confused, you should not be driving a car in the first place. That includes AI cars.

Drove through SF this evening. Most people treated it as a four-way stop! I was generally impressed.

But a citywide blackout isn’t that uncommon.

> But a citywide blackout isn’t that uncommon.

I think too many people talk past each other when they use the word common, especially when talking about car trips.

A blackout (doesn't have to be citywide) may not be periodic but it's certainly frequent with a frequency above 1 per year.

Many people say "common" meaning "frequent", and many people say "common" meaning "periodic".

I think your power company needs to be replaced if the frequency is above 1 per year.

Even among people who mean "common" as in "frequent", they aren't necessarily talking about the same frequency. That's why online communication is tricky!

It isn't? To me that's the main problem here, as this should be an exceptionally rare occurrence.

I think that statement is regional. I’ve never seen one.