I kinda feel like "It's often the fault of the human driver who takes over last second" means it is still Autopilot's fault. It either needed to alert and hand-off control to the user well before the situation got bad- or stick with control. Getting into a bad situation and just handing off control is the worst possible way to do things. The human needs time to update their situational awareness, the Tesla needs to explain what is causing its concern to the human, etc. If it can't do that effectively- and quickly enough in the pre-accident moments- then it needs to not be used at all because it is more dangerous than just a human driving on their own. 20 years ago I did robot-human driving collaboration experiments for the US Army and I can tell you based on our experiments this is a really hard problem, but those experiments are why Tesla's entire approach has seemed suspect to me from the beginning.
It's either functional or not, this sort of half-assed system is the worst of all worlds. And I say this as someone who has routinely trusted his family in a Waymo. But I think that the Tesla approach is much more dangerous.
So what I am referring to is more when they look at the data and they see there was human intervention that took place. Whether it be they pressed a pedal or jerked the wheel or whatever. I'm sure the system could handle the situation better on it's own, but the human reaction, especially when you've been driving yourself for many years is to take control and take action when shit hits the fan.
I think overall though as self-driving becomes more mainstream the system will only get safer. Not only will the computer systems themselves have better software and hardware to make them smarter, but there will be less and less human drivers doing stupid things that they have to account for. The roadways will have more predictable and sane self-driving vehicles on it.
I think the problem we have right now is that you almost do need these half-assed systems that still rely on human interventions to get over the initial hurdles of having people accept this technology. People want to feel like they still are in control while using something they may not fully trust. And regulators in many areas often also have this same desire. While I don't think we currently are at the ideal situation for self-driving, I think we are definitely getting there. I think Tesla's self-driving features really opened up the minds of people that human-less self-driving is a viable option that we can explore and that it can also be done safely.
I'm sure a time will come where we can switch to selling fully automated cars that people can buy for themselves with no human intervention needed, but I think we still aren't at that phase yet. People are starting to accept things like Waymo, but I still think many people would not accept having no control of their own personal vehicle when navigating around, even though I think it would be safer that way.
It's either functional or not, this sort of half-assed system is the worst of all worlds. And I say this as someone who has routinely trusted his family in a Waymo. But I think that the Tesla approach is much more dangerous.