"could it be the teen can now conveniently blame the “autopilot” for his poor driving?"

I think it's much more likely the teen had the autopilot feature turned on and was not paying any attention at all to traffic.

This kid was 18 years old and was given a car to drive that has an "Auto Pilot" feature. Probably hasn't ever worked on a car in his life and doesn't know anything about how that feature works or the real potential for it to fail.

His parents telling him not to use that feature would have no effect at all.

Every time one of these Tesla cars crash someone here blames the diver for using the technology, as opposed to the company that promotes and sells it.

"This car can drive itself! But you still have to drive it yourself." is bullshit.