“Time budget” is ultimately the same thing as the monetary budget. Spend more, get more ms time.

In a life or death situation, you should opt for the system which will keep you alive more, not the one that costs less.

If the technology (i.e. self-driving) cannot be delivered safely at an affordable cost, then probably it shouldn't be delivered at all then, no?

Define safely given the current road hazards of human drivers.

This isn't germane to the conversation at all, the budget under discussion is compute time.

If we can't fit the compute required to do it right in a car, we shouldn't be doing it at all. Their point is perfectly fine, regardless of WHAT KIND of "budget" is being discussed.

That being said, even automobiles make safety tradeoffs for cheapness or feasibility. However, we really shouldn't allow any tradeoffs for a completely unnecessary feature like "self driving". Imagine if wanting your car to have android auto or similar meant it couldn't use the lights, because a tradeoff was made.

Safely only means you're above a threshold value that is safe enough, but you can always be safer with sufficient further expense. Presumably your budget allows you to go beyond the absolute bare minimum, but it obviously won't get you to infinity either, so you optimize for the best option within your constraints.