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All of those suggestions will increases cost and decrease profit, there's no law mandating any of those so why would they go above and beyond for 'safety' reasons?

I understand it's the ethical decision but at the end of the day for-profit companies are only interested in one thing: maximizing profits.

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Robin_Message basically says a lot of what I was thinking, but you also need to consider what maximises profits in the long term (and self driving cars are a long term project) - is it doing the minimum now to reduce costs, or is it taking all reasonable precautions to avoid the public perception building that self-driving cars are unsafe?

Profit maximisation is not the only factor of running a business, even a public company.

But even given that, what are the PR and legal costs of this predictable [1] accident being made worse by a poor safety system? Plus the downtime on doing training/testing? And the probably harsher requirements that might now be enforced?

Maximizing profits doesn't mean doing everything on the cheap.

[1] in the sense there was likely to be an accident at some point.

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