From my understanding, if someone were to do this IRL, and the autopilot disengaged in the middle of the ride, then the occupants are fucked because there is no way to force the autopilot to engage. I wonder if this has caused crashes already.
Tesla is saying the autopilot wasn't engaged and couldn't be due to a lack of painted lines.
Ok, they defeat the sensors, take it out for a drive, they hit an area with no lane markings and the autopilot disengages and they can't recover.
In some multicopters when you loose signal it doesn't fall off the sky, instead it hovers gently down until it touches down on the ground, (or tries to fly back home which can cause a host of other problems)
With a human able to take control the former is the better choice.