> I don't think it is because in this case the person was hired by Uber specifically to "drive" this car. They knew that the car is still an incomplete product, they knew that they were testing it, they knew that they were literally getting paid to keep this car from doing something like this.

Sadly, while that is in fact the task of the safety drivers in other automated car trials it wasn't the case here for uber, because the "safety driver" was given both the job of safety driving and of checking, controlling and classifying the automated system's information, ensuring they'd have to split their focus and would need to frequently context-switch between two completely different tasks.

Worse, this decision of Uber all but ensured this would happen: the automation system is more likely to lose its shit and need checking specifically in situations where the safety driver would be most useful.