Autopilot would have worked fine if the lane markings were properly painted. No one will blame Caltrans terrible maintenance of 101. As I am writing this, NB 101 near Oregon Expressway has been under construction for over two years with no painted lane markings (and the lanes suddenly become super narrow), leading to merge hell and probably at least 3-4 fender benders a week. The Tesla GUI shows you whether or not it can see & track the lane markings, watching the road is much more important than "keeping your hands on the wheel". The one thing I will lay at the foot of Tesla: they really should have implemented eye tracking.
You're presuming that in these fatalities that the driver's eyes weren't on the road. What if the autopilot executed a maneuver that attentive drivers couldn't recover from in time?
Go watch the youtube video of another Tesla owner testing the intersection where this accident occurred. The lane markers on the left side vanish but there is a divider marker setup. It's super clear the Tesla followed the divider marker thinking it was a lane and hit the jersey barrier.
Also of note the impact attenuator was completely missing due to bad highway maintenance. If the tesla had struck an engineered set of barrels instead of side striking a jersey barrier the driver would have walked away.
I've seen it, and it has zero effect on what I said. The car "thinking it's in a lane" while being misaligned? I can possibly blame the people that draw lane markings. The car "thinking it's in a lane" while it slams into/past the edge of the road? 100% the car's fault. It shouldn't do that even if there are no lane markings at all.
