That's not his assertion. His assertion is that the pilots had no idea that anything was wrong (or being compensated for) up until the plane basically said 'fuck it, you deal with it'.
> "Or the idea that human beings can react faster than a computer can in the one or two seconds of a car accident"
Where is this claim being made? Certainly not in the article. As for the rest of your paragraph, those seem like individual, single-purpose systems (for the most part). When you're talking about larger systems where things within the car must communicate with each-other a lot more (probably written by different groups), I expect the scope for bugs is greater.
> "People will die driving in self-driving cars ... it's an inevitability"
I completely agree. The really interesting thing will be who is considered (legally) liable at that point. The manufacturer? The software authors? The driver? It's not really that clear cut and I bet the insurance companies are already thinking about this.
> "Yes, progress in technology is a horrible, horrible thing. Let's just put our heads back into the dirt and pretend it isn't happening."
Where did this negativity/sarcasm come from? The author of the piece isn't claiming progress is horrible so why put these words in his mouth? I read his basic point to be "design better stuff, there's plenty of research you can already draw on". That sounds pretty reasonable to me.
The more used, the weaker the defense.
Nowhere did the author say that progress in technology is horrible. OP is not a Luddite by any means.
Yes, sometimes it is horrible. New technology is not always "just a tool" (like a knife, which you can use to spread butter or kill someone), it frequently has inherent uses and can push towards certain societal outcomes. Not always good ones.
Technology is not some king we have to obey and adopt wholesale. It's something intelligent beings create at their and for their convenience.
>If we take the obviously huge leap to compare air travel's legendary reliability
Not that much reliability over cars, that's just the impression bad statistic give.
If you add the total hours of car driving and compare to the total hours of flying, it more or less comes as a wash for deaths per hours travelling with each kind of vehicle.
First of all, most of all civil aviation disasters in history have been caused by human error[0] (or, in at least 4 incredibly famous examples, human intention). Yes, humans have lost their lives to technology failing, but the assertion that the pilots always are able to do something if they had just been more aware and given control of the dozens of subsystems that a commercial jet controls behind the scenes is rather ridiculous. The "Shit Happens" factor exists for any level of technology.
Or the idea that human beings can react faster than a computer can in the one or two seconds of a car accident. The same car that is able to detect the fact you're trying to leave your lane when you accidentally fall asleep at the wheel and try to wake you up or keep you in lane, the same car that is able to fire airbags in the milliseconds after a major deceleration or impact event. The same car that prevents your brakes from locking up and tries to prevent your car from hydroplaning when you decide to speed over that puddle of water because you're late and speed limits are just a government ploy or some other bogus Libertarian rationale.
People will die driving in self-driving cars. This will happen some time in the future - it's an inevitability. But it is incredibly difficult to believe that figure will be anywhere near the scale of the ~35,000 automotive deaths per year in the United States we average now.
If we take the obviously huge leap to compare air travel's legendary reliability thanks in a big part to autopiloting, equipment redundancy, regular inspections and maintenance, and so forth to self-driving cars, we'd believe the deaths to be on the order of 35 or less a year. Cars may never be that reliable due to other factors (like all of the vehicles being on the same plane of travel), but it's still far more likely to be an overall win.
Yes, progress in technology is a horrible, horrible thing. Let's just put our heads back into the dirt and pretend it isn't happening.
[0]: http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm, because everyone always asks for citations instead of spending two seconds to search for themselves.