As someone with a bit of inside knowledge on this, I can assure you the real concern is in fact the cars being able to “see” but maybe more accurately to be able to label what they see as that is ultimately the most difficult struggle in path planning.
There are plenty of control methods that could ensure no crashes…

Guessing and checking is not the same thing as engineering. By justification I think he means full competition points analysis during the design phase of the competition fed by CFD and other input parameter changes to a full car . Validation (what you are mentioning) is different than justification and is judged…