Except that Tesla Full Self Driving is in beta, and despite the name "Autopilot " the software that guy was using specifically requires not only an attentive driver, but checks to make sure your hands are on the wheel. The software actively tries to make the driver pay attention. Using that incident in this fashion is like saying ABS systems aren't ready for prime time because someone on their phone hit something.
I think Tesla agrees with you that their FSD isn't quite ready, because it's still in beta, which is kinda the definition of "not quite finished"
But that begs the question I asked at the beginning of the thread (the first time I agreed with Cliffh). We will need a quantifiable measure of what is "ready". Griz had a decent response to that, but that needs to be expanded to how often? Once, twice, a million times in a row doing all those tasks? Saying they can never fail is u realistic, and I think likely to be dismissed out of hand. Americans have never in history required new tech to be 100% safe before adoption, and I don't see this being the first bit.
Take those cabs in SanFran. 92 incidents in 7 months is not in itself a useful data point. How many cars? How many miles driven? How many "incidents" of the same basic type (blocking traffic, broken down cars, not in the correct lanes, etc) did human driven cars have in that same time period? The company said "Cruise’s safety record is publicly reported and includes having driven millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities." If that's true, (need to verify PR hack) how many traffic fatalities and life threatening injuries happened in SanFran in those 7 months? Which is safer, the robocab or the average California driver?
Isn't that data we should be looking at when we are talking about implementing this tech? Because it's coming one way or another. America is to in love with gadgets and tech to ignore this one.
I will say that my bet, without actually deep diving the data, is those AutoCabs, and Tesla's beta FSDv11.whatever are probably safer than the average driver. And I think we want them to be better than that before we turn them loose. As a swag, I think better than the 90th percentile or so of drivers on the road would be where we want to be. Then the ubiquity of auto drive will mean that most of the drunks, phone watchers and generally careless distracted drivers don't bother and let the robot do it, for an overall safer experience, but that's just a SWAG.