Any accidents involving autopilot are far more significant that human caused accidents not only because of the drastically fewer number of cars running autopilot compared to normal cars but also because the system is meant to be much more superior if it is allowed to run on a public road.
If I have my kids in the car with me then I try to be as far away as I can from a Tesla on the road. The lack of regulation in their case is appalling. The statistics have to be far stronger than what is being stated currently for allowing their systems to be run on public roads.
This is news because it's not common enough to be a statistic.
Not sure how their technology is really the issue here.
Should it stop all progress though, no. No way. Not by a long shot.
Here's another difference - The fix to this issue, unless it's a standard mechanical failure that any other car might have, will fix this issue in all of their cars. A human driver may still right this second lock their wheels in a skid and t-bone another car. The ability for the car to pump the brakes to slow more rapidly had to be a hardware fix rolled out over decades in the form of ABS. With autonomous cars for this to (hopefully) never be an issue again it's tomorrow's software patch