[redpoint5]

There have been several big commercial airline crashes that have been caused by a pilot accidentally pressing on the flight stick, or bumping into some other button, and autopilot disengaging while giving the alert tone and visual indication that the plane was in manual flight mode. The pilot and copilot still failed to comprehend this until the planes attitude is off. The pilot then gets disoriented and fails to regain attitude control and crashes. These disasters could have been entirely avoided if the auto pilot was re-engaged.

If the facts in this Tesla crash are true, then liability rests entirely on the human driver. He took manual control when he provided steering input and throttle control. Can you imagine the backlash and liability Tesla would get if a driver took manual control of the wheel, but was overridden by the autopilot and then a subsequent crash resulted?

Autopilot always has to surrender control to the human pilot when they give an input to the controls. Nobody would ride in a car that can override our driving inputs.