Maybe, but our driving tests are designed around assessing humans. A system that fundamentally works quite differently likely has very different performance characteristics and failure modes and may need to be assessed differently to demonstrate that it will probably perform adequately in non-test conditions.

> Really the bar for humans to legally operate a vehicle is whatever licensing process is in place in a given state. We don't make them pinky swear to not do anything dangerous or illegal.

That is not sufficient for self-driving vehicles. The license is the thing that shows "okay, this person seems safe" but then some of the things that keep them safe are the threat of accidentally killing themselves, or being arrested and put in jail for a crime they commit while driving, or the financial penalty of being sued for an injury / damage they cause, or the risk of having their license taken away for errors. If a human being applying for their license was invincible, incapable of being jailed, sued, or having their license taken away, you might expect that our CDL or other licensing processes would be more stringent.

Wait, why do you think that permission to operate the autonomous vehicles would not be withdrawn? It's happened!

It's totally bizarre to give mediocre humans credit for their self preservation and then demand that an autonomous system be beyond superb because it doesn't have it. Statistically, the mediocrity is going to be the bigger problem.