I am a bit irked by the arrogance of this statement. The best we can hope for is to ensure the safety of the public.
And you, as a company, can be regulated out of business.
Pretend for a moment that the occurrence of the accident was a foregone conclusion. In such a scenario, the most positive thing that could be done would be to use the information to save the lives of others.
There's a smidgen of humility in the phrasing; that the accident might have been avoidable with the information that has been gained as a result of the accident. Of course, I presume that sort of sentiment would fall squarely under the "admission of guilt" umbrella that prevents companies from saying things like this.
Tesla is merely trying to take the next step in reducing that percentage.
Their strategy is sound and we so far have not come up with any alternatives that stand a remote chance of improving safety as much as self-driving. Even if they are largely unsuccessful, they are indeed trying to ensure the safety of the public.
Nope, and that's the whole difference. They will be killed by theirs actions, their choices, their inattention, or those of other drivers. They won't be killed by the machine.
With autopilot / pseudo-autopilot, they will be killed by the machine.
It is a huge difference, both in terms of regulations of people transportation safety, and in terms of human psychology, which makes a big difference between being in control and not being in control of a situation.
I can agree with the notion that the machine killed the person in all cases where the the machine does not include any controls for the person.
As a society, we currently recognize that the causes of accidents and the probability of occupant death are dependent on multiple factors, one of which is the car and it's safety features (or lack there of). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Causes
We also already have a significant level of automation in almost all cars, yet we are rarely tempted to say that having cruise-control, automatic transmissions, electronic throttle control, or computer controlled fuel injection means we are not in control and therefore the machine is totally at fault in every accident.
Operating a car was much harder to get right before these things existed and the difference can still be observed in comparison to small aircraft operations. Then and now we still blame some accidents on "driver/pilot error" while others are blamed on "engine failure", "structural failure", or "environmental factors".
I think having steering assistance or even true autopilot will not change this. In airplanes, the pilots have to know when and how to use an autopilot if the plane has one. If the pilot switches on the autopilot and it tries to crash the plane, the pilot is expected to override and re-program it, failure to do so would be considered pilot error. Similarly, drivers will have to know when and how to use cruse-control/steering-assist and should be expected to override it when it doesn't do the right thing.