Sure, incremental changes have been made to the new Tacoma, and you can argue "nothing has been carried over". But there is nothing revolutionary, on the same scale as a car not even having a steering wheel.
Because that's what you're talking about, steering wheel-less autonomous cars. It surely isn't plain to see that they will be safer. We've already seen the first fatality on Autopilot. And I, for one, don't think these will be in the hands of consumers for at least another decade or two. Simply because of costs and liability.
>Tesla says Autopilot has been used for more than 130 million miles, noting that, on average, a fatality occurs every 94 million miles in the US and every 60 million miles worldwide. The NHTSA investigation, Tesla says, is a "preliminary evaluation" to determine if the Autopilot system was working properly, which can be a precursor to a safety action like a recall.
so according to this, autopilot is already safer than the "average" driver.
130 million miles is not a statistically significant enough distance to make claims about safety if the national average is one fatality per 94 million miles. With so little data on autopilot compared to other vehicles (a few fatalities vs thousands), this could just be natural randomness or a small effect caused by drivers being more cautious of autopilot.
Given that there have been at least 3 Autopilot-related fatalities this summer over approximately 130 million miles driven worldwide, that is an average of roughly one fatality per 43 million miles, or significantly less safe than even the worldwide average.
Because that's what you're talking about, steering wheel-less autonomous cars. It surely isn't plain to see that they will be safer. We've already seen the first fatality on Autopilot. And I, for one, don't think these will be in the hands of consumers for at least another decade or two. Simply because of costs and liability.