There's no safety distance available when cars can pull into the road on which you're driving. That's one reason it is valuable to ID objects--there's a big difference between a building sitting by the side of the road, and a running car sitting in a driveway with a driver behind the wheel, on the side of the road.
Safe driving can mean taking proactive action in the latter case, like changing lanes away from the driveway (if you can) or slowing down, just in case that other driver screws up and tries to pull out in front you at the last second.
So, yeah, you would need pretty advanced AI for that. Throw it on the pile of reasons I think it will be a long time before we see self-driving cars that are good enough (and safe enough) to replace humans.
Safe driving can mean taking proactive action in the latter case, like changing lanes away from the driveway (if you can) or slowing down, just in case that other driver screws up and tries to pull out in front you at the last second.
So, yeah, you would need pretty advanced AI for that. Throw it on the pile of reasons I think it will be a long time before we see self-driving cars that are good enough (and safe enough) to replace humans.