non autonomous cars have driver assists now that slam on the brakes when they think you’re about to crash. Statistically a huge improvement to active safety, and then there’s cattle grids.

Imagine you’re driving along in full control on an empty country road. Out of nowhere your car panics, slams in the brakes, deploys seatbelt tensioners, and flashes bright warning lights because clearly you fell asleep or something if you cant see that big wall.

Would you react? Maybe swerve coz you’re startled?

You don't get to abdicate responsibility for your vehicle's "autopilot" just because that was only corporate marketing.

Words mean things. You don't get to say they mean different things when you say them just because it helps you sell more cars. Not in the fine print, and not in a court.

There's no way a "driver" can autocorrect for a vehicle that makes an emergency stop out of the blue -- the vehicle is still stopped, and now poses a safety hazard for the surrounding traffic.

Absolutely true, although the corporate liability thing really depends on whether the engineering takes after software or aviation (to pick two widely contrasting examples).

And I notice the "phone with wheels" built by mostly software engineers chooses to use words with well known meanings from the aviation industry without a) any of the rigour behind the regulations and certifications or b) much in the way of acknowledging the differences between the challenges of an "autopilot" safely managing to traverse the airspace 37,000 feet above Hawaii, compared to a rural lane in the UK (or 280 between the valley and the city).

(While, sadly, at the same time it seems from the outside that the ACAS code got written by the same outsourced dev team that work on their website the rest of the time. :sigh: )