You can most certainly blame AP (assuming it was on in this crash). The driver
should be alert at all times with eyes on the road, but when you are given the impression your car car drive by itself for stretches (Who would ever get that impression after activating a feature called "Autopilot"?
) you are likely more prone to let your attention wander compared to someone driving manually. About 5 seconds of distraction was probably all that was needed to allow this crash to happen.
Plenty of blame to pass around (including Caltrans, the driver), but to simply dismiss Tesla has any responsibility because no one "should" ever get in an accident with AP is pretty silly.
It's extremely difficult to make any kind of system foolproof. At some point there needs to be an understanding that the person who chooses to use some kind of technology understands the limitations of that technology.
As an example I have a Boosted board which is an Electric Longboard. It's awesome because it has the ability to electronically brake while going downhill. It's known to anyone who bothers to read the user manual that it can't brake going downhill if the battery is full.
Now let's say I crashed while going downhill because I forgot about that, and I ignored the beep warning. Should Boosted share responsibility for my accident? Probably not. They had warnings about needing to read the manual, and the manual clearly spells it out.
Should they have designed it so it didn't have this drawback. That way ignorant people would be protected, and informed people who simply had a "off day" wouldn't get bit by it.
Probably.
But, the problem with that is it means we can't have nice things. Everything would be held back because of liability concerns.
In this fatality accident we know the driver wasn't ignorant about AP. The autopilot name didn't trick him into trusting it. He was an extremely intelligent engineer who not only understood it, but complained about a drawback it shouldn't have. Just like I complained to Boosted about their limitation in their board.
For me to really blame Tesla/AP for this type of accident it would have to be a major systems failure that greatly reduced the drivers ability to react.
I say this as someone who has AP1, but doesn't use it very often. I don't because I believe that all L2 systems have the potential to reduce situational awareness. I could easily see myself getting into an accident with AP that I wouldn't get in without.
That's a choice I made for myself, and it's a choice that every other Tesla own should be given the benefit of the doubt to make.