If a human driver makes the trolley decision and swerves to take out a few pedestrians instead of a bus stop full of school kids, they're still going to prison for manslaughter if they caused the accident. "Why didn't you crash into the tree and risk killing only yourself? Oh, that option didn't come to mind, the self sacrifice given it's your car and your problem, not theirs?"
If Tesla (with 100% liability as the driver) makes the same decision through FSD, they'll be fined pennies, asked to make upgrades or suspend operations, the stock price will falter. Like GM cruise, they'll deal with the "glitch" and be back on the road in a few months.
Either way, the "accident" can almost always be avoided even if that fork in the road of fate is seemingly too far before the actual event. "Why did you drive on those old tires on a rainy day? Your necessity outweighs the necessities of others?"
As a society, we "trust" young teenagers to take the family rattle trap to joust with oncoming traffic at 100+ mph closing speeds, or within inches of parked cars and crowded sidewalks, taking unprotected left turns and driving in rain or squinting into the setting sun after that beer they're not allowed to drink in the first place. They kill us by the thousands in the same way. We put up with it. It's part of the deal. Pharmaceutical companies profit from drugs that don't work and kill hundreds of thousands of us in the same way every year. But we don't even get to vote on it or treat it as a policy issue for the next Presidential election … we'll be distracted by the terror of AI, the fear of foreigners, the fear of just about anything except the big stuff.
FSD is still statistically crude and unsafe, but with some simple limitations (no left turns, no two-way stop intersections, clear weather, etc. it is far safer than our known unsafe drivers.
Locally, in Silicon Valley, the week before Cinco de Mayo, the county operated sobriety checkpoints. The statistics were horrifying. 50% of drivers were unlicensed, uninsured, or both. 25% of drivers were drunk. On an unremarkable weekday.
So, no, I'm not in a cold sweat panic about FSD, but I hope it starts out with the kind of limitations I described, otherwise the nannies and the hysterical types will use the stupidity we've already seen from FSD users to delay and defeat the progress that's long overdue.