Nope, I am still blaming government (and I am in no way a Musk fanboy)
Self-driving tech has been there for decades. Convoy driving of trucks (one human-driven truck in front, several trucks following its lead) on highways was developed in the 90s.
On well-maintained infrastructures, automated driving is a problem that was solved before deep learning. The fact that we don't have an automatic lane-driving mode for highways as a standard feature in new cars is a political failure.
In 1997 a huge and successful demonstrator for an automated highway system was made. And legislator did not follow up by allowing on the road the systems they spent more than 10 billions to develop. [1]
In my opinion, a technology should be considered ready/safe enough if it is x times safer than the average driver. Zero accident is a crazy requirement. 10 times safer as human is much more reasonable but no politician will accept that.
And obviously it is easier to develop a safe system on some well known and well maintained road segments (e.g. highways) than on 100% of the roads and dirt roads on the North American continent.
So yes, the only way for an economic actor to get into there is to bend the existing rules, as rules for automated vehicles were never made. You can't sell a car saying "no need to look at the road, I'll drive for you" so you put a disclaimer, while making sure people understand that you actually made a self-driving car.
You can't sell a self-driving car and argue that your rate of accident is acceptable because the laws for such a notions are not there. A single accident in your self-driving car (that may be 10 times safer than a manual car) and you will be considered responsible.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-national-automate...