Who speaks for the rest of the country who does NOT want to be driving on roads with driverless vehicles (and we probably already are).
I was in software for 30 years - I know none of it is bulletproof. I'd rather not be killed by someone's buggy code, written at 3AM while they were trying to make a deadline, and not adequately tested because "Let the Beta folks test it".
I’ve also spent 35 years+ in software, still am. While I hear, very loudly, what you’re saying I’ll point out that 99% of the time airplanes are flying themselves. I work in automotive mainly, meeting functional safety development standards is hard, it’s not like developing code in most environments. Ultimately, every function must trace to requirements, every requirement must trace to code, and one or more tests must exist tracing back to every requirement. Static analysis tools *must* be used, MISRA-C coding guidelines followed, as well as SIL, PIL, HIL, etc. testing performed etc. etc. Then there’s meeting SOTIF standards on top.
IMHO - it’s knowing this that is causing such headaches. It’s orders of magnitude more expensive to certify code, as required, than regular software. For this application there so much code (tens of millions of lines) that this standard approach, as followed in avionics, is an economic problem.
From my view, the industry is reverting to long laundry lists of ADAS capabilities - I have a list of 30 that are going into vehicles. I do believe autonomous vehicles are inevitable but the problem is harder than most thought. I’d rather the investment be put into technologies that, in the short term, save lives - this should have been the focus. This is now the trend - but full autonomy distracted from this goal, even if a lot of derivative work does go into ADAS features.