I don't think his point is that autonomous vehicles haven't made any progress, rather the rate of progress has been pretty slow if you adjust the start point to

I don't think his point is that autonomous vehicles haven't made any progress, rather the rate of progress has been pretty slow if you adjust the start point to the 80's/90's rather than the last 10 years or so that the public usually thinks of. Of course, the rate of progress isn't necessarily linear, especially given the rapid advancement in machine learning, so there's no reason at all to assume any further progress here on out will take just as long. Even so, I don't know if it has been demonstrated adequately if AV's perform just as well (if not better) than humans, given the vast, vast variety of unideal situations human drivers have been subjected to over the past century.