Tesla claims they can do it without the more expensive LIDAR; other companies in the field disagree. And Teslas have crashed into stopped objects (and into trucks moving sideways across the path, which is similar from a radar detection point of view).
LIDAR is affected by weather, so Musk might be on the right track. Using multiple radar detectors with sophisticated enough software could possibly, eventually approximate the capability of LIDAR, maybe not quite but it would work in all weather. Then again maybe multiple LIDAR detectors at different wavelengths can mitigate weather somewhat. Of course running both LIDAR and radar together would be ideal but currently cost prohibitive.
Humans aren't perfect by far, and there's a lot of room for automated driving to compensate for that and do better in the long term, but human perception and intuition when paying attention is actually really good and hasn't been exactly replicated with camera, radar, or LIDAR for that matter technology yet.
The Wired article is one of the rare examples of realistic pessimism about the timeline. I have just about given up on telling people that I think fully autonomous driving is at least a decade away because everyone is convinced it's just around the corner. Just like twenty years ago everyone thought that fully developed artificial intelligence in our everyday lives was just around the corner.
when I notice the driver in the next lane in front of me start glancing and looking like they want to change lanes, I realize that I subconsciously either back off to give them a clear obvious lane change, or I speed up a bit to get out of their blind spot
You don't even need to see the driver, just the suble motions of the car in the next lane including changes in speed are good indicators, combined with an awareness of that driver's situation, i.e. their lane is moving slower that yours, someone changing a flat tire up ahead of them, etc.
I don't know of any system that looks through the windshield of the car in front of you to notice what the car in front of them is doing, much less looking even farther ahead to see what traffic is doing. The current systems are good at helping us to keep from hitting the car directly in front of us, sometimes even faster reacting than even an attentive driver. Everything else however is really only useful as a backup when a driver is not paying attention. For example I estimate that my LKAS detects the lane markings about 75% of the time. Which means if I got distracted, there is a three out of four chance that LKAS will keep me from going out of my lane. That is certainly better than not having LKAS, but it's far short of allowing me to do something else even for a brief period of time.
The real dilemma about the continuing improvements in these systems is that the better the systems get the more people start to become less concerned about looking away from the road for several seconds. That's when the accidents occur that we keep reading about.
The lane-keeping on the Clarity will turn itself off if you don't move the wheel for 15-20 seconds, and while the 'lane departure' shake will stay active, it won't keep you in-lane or re-activate the lane-keeping.