There are two meanings of "require" (or allow) in play. "Require" could mean "must do it or it won't function" or "require" could mean "must do it because we say so". AP requires hands on the wheel only in the second sense, except for needing to briefly tug the wheel every few minutes when it nags. And in the beginning it didn't even have nags. I think the disconnect between these, where the AP system they gave us works fine without hands on the wheel, frankly shows that Tesla introduced the whole "hands on the wheel" thing as a cynical ploy to try to reduce their liability exposure in case of an accident: something I cannot blame them for given our litigious society. I believe the company knows perfectly well that AP will mostly be used without hands on the wheel, and even intended AP to be used without hands on the wheel, but by saying we must have our hands on the wheel they are able to say the system was being misused by the driver if something went wrong. And I think most of us understand Tesla's motivation and thus have no fear or hesitation to use the system without our hands on the wheel, because we know that it was really designed to be used without our hands on the wheel. After all, if we all really believed the system wasn't designed that way, so it was really much less safe without our hands on the wheel, we would all be pretty stupid to use the system the way most of us do without our hands on the wheel, wouldn't we? So both the company and most of the owners play this sly, cynical game where we wink and nod at each other and use AP without hands on the wheel, just as it was designed to be used and just as the company would say it should be used if we lived in a world without product liability.
I fear the problem is that now that the regulators are involved, the inconsistency in our game will be scrutinized, the meanings of "require" will be forced to be converged, and AP will be made not to function without our hands on the wheel, even though it was never meant to be used that way.