[Retric]

While that may be desirable if the car is operating alone in production, in testing just about anything it's not sure of should probably result in a disengagement. From my sensors are giving conflicting information with my map, to I failed to read that sign... they all should probably result in a hand off.

After that hand off someone can look at the test data and chose a better response, but caution when operating a deadly vehicle is causation is perfectly appropriate.

[jacquesm]

Agreed, but in that case it shouldn't be on public roads to begin with. If your software is so bad that the solution to complex situation is to throw up its hands and panic it has no place in traffic. After all, there are plenty of situations where inaction is just as dangerous or even more dangerous than action.

I feel pretty weird in the knowledge that people are operating vehicles with what to me comes across as barely out of beta software on roads shared with others.

[Retric]

Self driving cars safety track record during testing suggests these are already very well designed systems.

I also don't think you can get to self driving cars without testing them on public roads. So far it's been very safe and potentially it's going to save millions of lives so I don't have a problem with this.

Further, these cars are not simply turning off in traffic they are making errors known while continuing to drive as safely as possible. That's vastly safer than suppressing errors which generally results in people ignoring them.