I don't understand how its possibly legal for tesla, or anyone for that matter, to be able to push out beta life critical software to the general public. Say for example a utility company pushed out an update that flipped the power contactor between you and the grid too many times that it caught fire, the company would be taken to court. I simply just don't understand how Tesla can get away with it.
I think you could argue that it isn't life-critical software because it requires active driver monitoring. What makes it different from lane-keeping assist in other vehicles? Or bog-standard cruise control? The fact that it attempts to do more things does not necessarily make it more dangerous. Your cruise control can drive you into a truck or off the road, but we accept that it is the driver's responsibility to not…
The other factor is that human attention may be needed in a situation where it is very hard to actively fix the situation if you're not already in the OODA loop. If you suddenly realize you need to override the car, and you're in the middle of a complex merge and the reason you need to override the car is because someone else screwed up, it may not be possible to solve the problem with the extra cost of your attention spinning up.