We don't really know if there will be any safety benefits at all, and while I believe we might get to that point, it's a bit farther away than some tech-giants would like us to believe.

If you listen closely to who say what, you'll notice that a lot of entrepreneurs claim that we will have full AI within a couple of years, while a lot of boring engineers huff and puff and are generally pessimistic.

I'm sure the there are great savings involved in self-driving transport - especially long-haul , so it will happen sooner than later, but this will initially mean more death - not less.

For better or worse, I don't think a self driving car will be commercially successful until it shows it is at least as safe as a human driver. More likely it will have to demonstrate that it is significantly safer. It might be the case that whichever company first launches doesn't correctly gauge the safety of their car, but I definitely think the goal is to be safer from day one.

Nobody is saying the car itself was at fault. People are saying (justifiably) that the people who put the car out on public roads with faulty engineering are at fault.

> I don't think a self driving car will be commercially successful until it shows it is at least as safe as a human driver. More likely it will have to demonstrate that it is significantly safer.

I agree. And the incident under discussion illustrates that the technology has not yet reached that point.

Furthermore, "commercially successful" is not the first objective that needs to be met. The first objective is "safe enough to be allowed on public roads". The incident under discussion illustrates that the technology has not yet reached that point either.