Self driving is a big Brick thing he wants I think.

Sure, but when someone misses the massive truck in the middle of the road and slams into it we just assume they were paying zero attention and blame it on that. We don't blame it on the principle of the human capability to drive, because everyone with a license knows not to slam into trucks. The human "tech" is fine, our sensors work.

Can't say the same about "autopilot"

I believe a lot of the issue is just around the ethical decisions. If a car has a choice to plow head-on into a semi or take out a group of kids on the sidewalk, which will it choose? When it's humans behind the wheel, it's just reflex/instinct. With self-driving cars, they would be able to make a calculated decision regarding which is the better choice.

the other aspect of this is having a miniscule number of self-driving cars navigating roads overwhelmingly populated by vehicles driven by drunk/high/medicated/stupid as fuck humans.

once all vehicles identify themselves to other vehicles in their space via a local-to-that-area network type communication, these sort of incidents disappear.

I believe good dolphin made this case and I am stealing it but the answer is to protect the driver just like we have now while still following the law.

The true potential of self driving cars is to improve how they operate in a car crash to the point where you can be relatively safe in an accident because of positioning and the ability for things like the windows to get covered with a hard shell or even eject prior to the crash.

There is a warning on this car every time it is activated that says it "is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times.".

Can't really blame Tesla for this one then.

Here we go.

so the geniuses at TESLA don't have the technology to detect and then shut-down the auto-pilot when someone takes their hands off the steering wheel for, say, longer than the Eagles 'Life In the Fast Lane'?

In April tesla release they had gone 47 million miles in auto pilot and were logging about 1 million new miles a day. Ball park that puts them at 1 fatality in 150 million miles. Govt stats say on average there is 1.3 fatalities per 100 million miles driven. Early read says its on par with human drivers.

Rocky 4 paved the way for this kind of stuff. Just one more reason it's a great movie.

Pretty good for a technology that isn't even ready yet.

TESLA has issues beyond recognizing giant trucks right in front of their vehicles--like maybe a kill switch function when pieces of the car get lopped off all of sudden.

Looks like this zombie TESLA kept going even after hitting the truck and having its top ripped off: hit 2 fences and a light pole and then appears to be trying to get back on the road when it finally crapped out: