I don't know what it's like in Italy, but in America bicycles are allowed on almost all roads, except for limited access highways. They're even allowed on most regular highways, to the chagrin of many car drivers. The poor acceleration of bicycles is the worst on roads where frequent stops are expected (for intersections) but bicycles are allowed on almost all of those roads, particularly city streets which obviously have abundant intersections. Limited access highways don't have intersections that would frustrate cyclists, but as a consequence of not having intersections those roads have much higher speeds that cyclists can't keep up with. Furthermore, heavy trucks have terrible acceleration, much worse than cyclists, but are allowed on all of the limited access highways that bicycles are banned on.

Maybe it's different in Italy, but in America the restrictions on bicycles really seem to be about top speed, not acceleration.

I get what you say, and sure laws are different from country to country.

Overall the reasons why you cannot drive bicycles on highways are many, but when you put them all together it mostly fall under one term: safety.

What I wanted to say on my original comment is that trying to put an autonomous driving car in a urban situation is not about checking the speed limit from a road sign, looking at a ground stop or other road signals. If you want a safe autonomous car in an urban center it must be aware of the context much more than “this is a stop sign” or “speed limit is 50km/h”, that’s why I praise Mercedes for trying to solve the solvable problems first and then move to more complex ones.