I believe the way Tesla is approaching autonomous driving is fundamentally flawed by political/ethical reasons. The general public accepts the fact humans may

I believe the way Tesla is approaching autonomous driving is fundamentally flawed by political/ethical reasons. The general public accepts the fact humans may cause fatal mistakes while driving, because responsibility is expected and ultimately there’s someone to punish. But automation making fatal mistakes, even at a lower rate than humans, isn’t accepted the same way, in part because companies are not individuals – Elon Musk isn’t personally responsible for any accidents – and in another part because this space is currently unregulated – unlike in aviation where some body has to vet a manufacturer’s plane project before it can be mass produced. So, Tesla wants to iterate a product with significant risks on the wild while unregulated, at the same time enjoying a lower level of accountability an individual holds while driving – they just put on the contract that “self-driving” feature has to be monitored all times and if it fails the blame is on the driver. This is not a surprise considering Musk apparently extremely libertarian views, but is obviously BS as it’s a way to dodge risk while capturing all the upside. It’s a perfect rational thing to do in his opinion (we’re taking risks to innovate, etc), but it’s ultimately unethical. Maybe self-driving could be more reliably achievable with the help of local government adapting roads so cars don’t have to rely only on their sensors, or the whole industry could agree on a standard so cars can coordinate – but that would mean regulation, and Musk doesn’t believe in that. He believes Tesla can hack their way out of the problem only with technology in computer vision. I don’t think it will succeed, because if you look at aviation, another industry that enjoys a high level of automation and safety, nothing would be possible by initiative of a single plane manufacturer – the automation relies on equipment installed on planes, airports, etc. all standardized, as well as training and processes followed by the entire industry. Time will tell who’s right, but my bet is a reliable self-driving car has better chance of coming out of a place in Europe, Japan, Korea or China, where manufacturers and governments have a better chance of collaborating to achieve a solution that isn’t stuck into the “computer vision” local maxima.