But they'd get restitution through insurance. Even if nobody is going to jail, there will still be insurance claims.

And that's where I'm aiming at... If Mercedes decides, like Ford did before them, that it's cheaper to pay out the insurance claims they lose instead of fixing their bugs then innocent people will have to die so Mercedes can keep up their profit margins.

That's exactly the point I'm trying to make

You seem to argue that, on the unproven premise that current AI is better than human drivers, we should let corporations test it out in the real world even if they are not criminally liable ever. For me, that's a bad deal.

Now, imagine we go down this rabbit hole... It's already 10x cheaper to lobby USA politicians to limit Mercedes liability than it would be for them to actually start paying wrongly death claims

In Texas, if you doctor shows up drunk for surgery and leaves you quadriplegic or kills you, the biggest liability exposure has been limited to 250k

I love tech and I do believe science, knowledge and the tech it can produce could improve our lives in unimaginable ways.... But as long as our approach to it continues to be profit over people, socialise the risk - privatize the profit and corporation being citizens in all aspects except liability, we will never get there