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The 1% I mentioned isn't a failure rate -- it's a hypothetical case of a vehicle that is almost fully autonomous, but isn't.

Eliminating 99% of a driver's functions doesn't necessarily make a car any safer. In fact, it might even make the car LESS safe if it encourages drivers to stop paying attention to the road. I use that case last year in Florida where the Tesla driver was killed when his car crashed into a truck while operating in "auto-pilot" mode. If Tesla still hasn't figured out how to detect a tractor-trailer in the roadway in front of its car, then I'd say they have a long way to go to make the technology anything remotely close to an improvement over a conventional vehicle.

The 1% I mentioned isn't a failure rate -- it's a hypothetical case of a vehicle that is almost fully autonomous, but isn't.

I am skeptical programmers can program all driving scenarios. Just the other day I drove through a construction zone that was down to one lane. A storm blew over a bunch of construction zone markers and turned the single lane into an obstacle course. Navigating the obstacle course required crossing the white line on numerous occasions. I suspect a self driving car would just come to a dead stop and do nothing.

The Tesla crash that produced one dead, was not with a fully autonomous vehicle. In fact, that Tesla was equipped with more or less level-3 "autonomy", meaning that, it really wasn't worthy of being used for any kind of autonomy, since it required the driver to keep his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel; IOW, it was mostly gimmicky, and meant to get people excited about Tesla being on the edge of technology. The driver was actually very careless, since he wasn't supposed to assume that the car could handle any condition on the road. Tesla did correct for that kind of situation.

Fully autonomous means that, a person could go to sleep in the car while the car takes him from point A to point B, with no expectation of the rider being involved at all. Point A and B could be any points on a map, at any distance and in very difficult driving conditions, like heavy city traffic like you'd find in NY City or L.A. In fact, there was a test where a fully autonomous vehicle drove from California to NYC, with no driver intervention at all, other than monitoring and data gathering.

https://qz.com/363350/americas-longest-autonomous-drive-from-california-to-new-york-starts-this-weekend/

A completely autonomous vehicle like you describe, may never be possible, just like there will never be a perfect human. If humans