You’re probably right in the long term. So, when the world is 100% self-driving cars, we can probably change the rules to favor the machines. In the near-term, however, it’s probably good to make the robots obey the human laws so that the humans don’t start getting the idea that they can disobey them, too.

laws of physics still apply. Car still takes time to slow down, even with perfect reaction times. Well, maybe you could get it to stop in time, but it might break the necks of everyone in the car.

At 30 miles per hour, the majority of the stopping distance is reaction time from a human. Self-driving cars have maybe 10/20 of that reaction time in the case of immanent collision. I also don't know about you, but my car can stop in significantly less than pretty much all of the stated distances by a fraction.

at 30mph breaking is about 50/50 perception time and breaking time for a total of 3-4s. Self-driving cars would an improvement for sure, they would have a max 2 second emergency break, but not quick enough as far as I understand. Even if that were enough, I would not appreciate my cab emergency breaking randomly because a kid steps out in front of a bus. Its best to slowly stop, then slowly accelerate. Maybe the optimal solution is to creep past the buss?