That's fair enough, but the problem I have is the way this event is being portrayed in news and social media. The implication everywhere is that autopilot just unexpectedly swerved into a wall and there was nothing the driver could have done. It actually was expected, and any reasonable driver could have easily prevented it, because it had almost happened so many times in the past.

> any reasonable driver could have easily prevented it,

Not really. The crash attenuator was missing because someone else crashed into it. That highway exit is ridiculous. As for faults, there is obviously fault on both sides. The driver should have been more alert and the "autonomous system" should have detected the obstacle and slowed down the vehicle before hitting the guard.

Both sides? Shouldn't there be some responsibility for the organization tasked with making sure roads have dividers that people don't crash against multiple times in a month?

What would you suggest Caltrans do instead, other than replace the attenuator more often?

I can think of various other things that Caltrans can place there for people to crash into, but at some point there will be the start of a rigid wall.

The repeatable problem suggests a lapse in the current layout. The fact that a new crash happened within two weeks suggests that replacing the attenuator should have happened faster than that.

That being said, I'm only pointing out that in this case there can be extra variables to account other than the car manufacturer and the driver, the same way that when people speeding, running stop signs and pedestrians not paying attention when crossing an intersection can all result in a collision there is always also a bit of missing urban planning that could have helped avoid the situation in the first place. I believe the same would be true of this case.

This is the issue with wireless updates on any vehicle.

What if tomorrow Autopilot is updated and it begins occurring 2 miles down the road?

On the flip side, Tesla fixed this specific issue (and apparently unfixed it again) with over the air updates. If this was another manufacturer the cars would need to be recalled and it would likely be years before a fix was rolled out to all vehicles and therefore lives would continue to be in danger. So it isn't like over the air updates are inherently bad. The reality of the situation is that there almost certainly needs to be some level of government oversight over this type of thing.

I won't argue against over the air for everything but when your 'autopilot' system can be updated any day for any reason, I would argue that it failing and killing you shouldn't be as excusable.

It is worth noting that Teslas don't update "any day for any reason". The updates are very rarely more frequent than once every several weeks and have to be manually triggered and approved by the owner.

>It actually was expected, and any reasonable driver could have easily prevented it, because it had almost happened so many times in the past.

Not true if is the driver first time on that road at that time of day on that software version.