Insurance rates will probably go up on "self-crashing cars" if this trend continues.
For some reason, people aren't dying so dramatically due to cruise control. I love cruise control, because it helps me focus on "driving" (which I consider steering + observing). The Tesla autopilot feature seems to do the opposite: it helps you focus on not driving. This ain't Volvo, folks.
The last one with the truck does count, I agree. If it enables inattentiveness, it's likely to cause harm.
The Skoda driver makes less sense: if you are trying (like he was) to stop, brakes should always outpower the engine. Unless the brakes failed. Toyota went through a huge ordeal just like that (possibly floormats, possibly ECU stack overflow, who knows). An attentive & trained driver should be able to handle it. The truckers were willfully ignoring what pretty much every driving manual tells you. If you drive at night without lights, in a blizzard, with summer tires, I don't see how you can blame the car manufacturer if you hit something. But if all you do is consistently go over potholes, and consistently lose power steering & lights when the serpentine belt comes loose, I think you can blame the manufacturer.
The difference is those were caused by a malfunctioning cruise control, or by cruising at an unsafe speed. The Tesla self-driving software always veers towards the barrier in those conditions without suffering a hardware or software malfunction.
Even I, a non-CDL driver who never learned how to use a manual transmission, know when cruise control is appropriate: only under good conditions with daylight when there are no other cars around.
For some reason, people aren't dying so dramatically due to cruise control. I love cruise control, because it helps me focus on "driving" (which I consider steering + observing). The Tesla autopilot feature seems to do the opposite: it helps you focus on not driving. This ain't Volvo, folks.