Exactly, I live in Rome and you'd really be surprised by the number of bikers who drive on the sidewalk to avoid morning traffic. I don't think Google cars are prepared to respond to people merging from the sidewalk, they're just unpredictable and nothing will ever change that.
Reaction time isn't the problem. Cars can't make moral decisions.
It's not uncommon that a pedestrian will jump in the road (sometimes intentionally to commit suicide). This happens to me personally on a daily basis in San Francisco. Sometimes the driver has a moral choice to ether run the car off the road killing people on the sidewalk or killing the pedestrian.
What do you expect a Self-Driving car to do in that situation?
There are moral problems that I'd be uncomfortable putting to a computer.
This isn't one of them. Am I missing something, is there something wrong with simply modeling likely impacts and trying to cause the least harm to the fewest number of people? That's what I would do, only with worse reaction time and less information.
I don't see why not. If I were writing a self-driving car I would care that
1. My car stays in lane and obeys the rules of the road
2. It doesn't hit anything
Fulfilling 2) is "easy", you just need to make sure you have sensor coverage within a safe stopping distance.
Besides, a biker is just a faster cyclist, and it's common and often legal for cyclists to merge from the sidewalk, if the sidewalk is marked for that purpose
