I suspect that if the attitude towards autonomous vehicle accidents is similar to that of aircraft accidents, they will become extremely safe very quickly.
On the other hand, if every autonomous vehicle accident is investigated to the same standard as every aircraft accident, it appears likely that the entire system will become so overloaded and cost-ineffective that it is completely impractical to operate before we get over the hurdle and achieve any consistently safer performance that might otherwise be available.
I agree with the risk of overload. Sanity needs to prevail.
But by similar attitude, I was mostly thinking about the rigorous and systematic efforts to find root causes of accidents, rather than the toxic attitude of attempting to deflect blame (and liability) that is so pervasive in other industries.
Safety starts with the culture: it's not an add-on or an afterthought. If Google starts to not fixing problems with its cars to avoid acknowledging a problem (and the liabilities that go with it), then we have a problem...
On the other hand, if every autonomous vehicle accident is investigated to the same standard as every aircraft accident, it appears likely that the entire system will become so overloaded and cost-ineffective that it is completely impractical to operate before we get over the hurdle and achieve any consistently safer performance that might otherwise be available.