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"Fully aware" drivers (true Scotsmen) as proposed here statistically do not exist, or at least do not compose the vast majority of drivers. So it is kind of a meaningless comparison to draw.

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It's not a True Scotsman in this context. The point is that humans tend to crash into things they're not fully aware of, short of self-harm.

Either:

A) The autopilot could not see a concrete barrier in its path. B) More likely, and as the story reports, it WAS aware of the danger but didn't do anything.

Either case is at least worth discussing, no?

In which bucket would you put the possibility that the computer observed evidence of the barrier, but the evidence that there was no barrier -- the prior that barriers don't exist in lanes of traffic -- was too strong?

Bucket A. Which could be articulated more generally as: failure to capture the world as it really is.

"tend NOT to", did you mean?

"Fully aware drivers" are all the many drivers who manage to navigate that area without driving into the barrier, minus the ones who didn't mean to get off there or meant to get off and didn't. The latter groups are aware enough to drive safely through the area but still spacing out a little.

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