Comment by sidibe

The problem with gradually going from drivers assistance to self driving is there will be some period, possibly a very long period, where the cars almost never need intervention but aren't safe enough to actually not need it. There will be a lot of accidents if it's released widely during this period (yes much more than human driver accidents. aside: there seem to be a lot of Tesla fans who think humans are much worse drivers than they are). This is what Google saw a decade ago when their self driving cars started getting good and their drivers started being irresponsible, so they decided to start from the idea the driver couldn't be a crutch and the car always had to be able to do something safe. Getting this level of robustness is why it seems to some that they've made no progress in 10 years.