But you're never going to avoid situations like this completely, regardless of how good the car itself is. Imagine one breaks down. Or gets hit by something (whether that be due to a natural disaster, the local landscape, human actions, animals, etc). Or it gets hacked. Or it just plain run out of power.

Now imagine the other autonomous cars following it have to make an urgent decision; go straight or swerve out of the way. Imagine the only somewhat clear path has some innocent people on it, and the alternative is basically to let the car end up as a giant fireball after it hits whatever's in front.

You can try and avoid similar situations as much as possible, by having the car figure out what's going on ahead and do things to avoid it (change lane, slow down, etc). But the situation isn't avoidable all the time. If something happens close to you and you're going down a motorway at 70mph, then physics alone says the car cannot stop in time. It will have to decide then to either take the risk or get obliterated.

It's not pathological stupidity, it's often bad luck. And in cases like that, the driver is right to assume the vehicle won't sacrifice them for others.