They can put whatever disclaimers in the manual but their branding is giving a different message. It's a message Tesla wants the customer to hear: "sit back and relax, the car drives for you."
The branding does not communicate that the driver needs to be just as aware and engaged as they would be if they were driving on their own, and be ready to take control of the vehicle at any moment.
Compare this to GM's "Super Cruise" branding. The message I get from that is "cruise control, but better." Cruise control is a long established feature, drivers have plenty of experience with it, and they know that it is definitely not going to drive the car itself. They know they're still going to have to pay attention because the car is going to do some of the driving tasks but not all of them. The car is making no implicit or explicit claim that it will drive for you.
"Full Self Driving" and related features like "Summon" make implicit claims in how they're named and presented. The driver absolutely has responsibility but Tesla is trying to play both sides of the coin with their branding vs their actual liability.
When a product's naming and branding is well aligned with its actual utility, it builds trust with the customer. The customer doesn't feel like the seller is trying to pull a fast one on them.
Tesla chose their branding direction and Elon chooses to make his "optimistic" predictions that have made it sound like true self driving is right around the corner for years. That people take this impression away is no fault of anyone but those that put the impression out there in the first place.
The naming, whatever you may think of it, is massively overrided by the strongly worded warnings and instructions that are abundantly and repeatedly displayed to the driver, that effectively and unambiguously convey to the driver that they must be attentive while using the driver assist features.
Second, who do you think was ultimately the one at fault for the excessive radiation doses caused by the Therac-25 machines: the machine technician operating the machine or the machine manufacturer? If it isn't the technician then I don't understand your argument because you can just find/replace every instance of driver in your post with technician.
Creating Agents is a lot harder.
This Time It’s Not Different At All
Tool - Pretty much everything humanity has made to date. It does a preprogrammed thing or provides mechanical advantage. But it does not act on novel decisions it is making.
The terms come from an AI safety expert that Lex Friedman interviewed recently. [1]
Tesla FSD is almost an agent, though it asks a human to be ready to take over at any time.
Secondly, it is already established and disclosed that the driver assist cannot self-drive. This would be comparable to a Therac-25 machine being sold as being incapable of limiting radiation output, and then not limiting radiation output.
There is absolutely no other company in the world where a predictable and disclosed shortcoming of the driver assist combined with the failure of the driver to fulfill their responsibility to be in control, would be blamed on the driver assist program.
Both Musk and Tesla are far from perfect, but the lengths that people go to to attack them is obviously agenda-driven and a result of emotions.
This is a driver assist program. There is no way such a program, that is subordinate to the driver and depends on the driver being in control, can protect the driver from not doing their part, and driving.