The problem is, you'd be hitting all these pesky corner cases, with some of them requiring active avoidance - downed power lines, water on the road, vehicles on fire, other traffic participants. My guess, it is hard to engineer a system that could handle the long tail of making decisions under uncertainty with "purely physical approach". You'll run out of complexity budget.
it's certainly full of dimensions. I may be a ideal-extremist here, and business probably doesn't like being overly cautious, but at least that would be a vehicle I'd trust no to endanger anybody (in or out), even if it looks underperforming compared to autopilot~.
