[sewer_bird]

It's not really inferiority: the commonality of the other countries is that they typically follow a different regime of negotiation of the road. In specific, the USA and other anglophone countries are extremely strict about what motions are allowed on the road: the expectation is that everyone stays precisely within the lanes and drives a bit robotically.

This, however, is actually not that common in most of the world, where the road is much more 'negotiated': speeds are slower but the streets more chaotic. I wonder sometimes if it's more like treating the vehicles as horses rather than boxes of death, or something similar: it's a markedly different mode.

I imagine his point is that self-driving cars rely on the robotic driving customs of parts of the West to do as well as they do, and that he's skeptical of these vehicles' ability to interact with more dynamic streetscapes filled with e-scooters, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, people carrying stuff, and so on.

(Source: living in China/Asia)