"If a reasonably prudent person would have behaved the same way then no liability should apply."

I agree that these incidents properly qualify as "accidents". However, as the studies show, these cases are the distinct minority rather than the majority of incidents. Errors of judgement do not fall within "reasonable prudence".

"you know that you and other drivers violate the law all the time unconsciously."

What actually happens is that people rationalize that certain discretionary adherence to the law is acceptable. Much of driving becomes semi-conscious only because of repetition of prior conscious action (with two daughters having learner's permits, this has become painfully obvious). If someone chooses to accustom themselves to selective obedience to the law, those actions at some point will become the default actions (aka habits) of the future. What they are actually doing, however, is arguing that only outside enforcement of the law makes it applicable, denying the personal responsibility to police and manage one's self. They deny that they own themselves.

"Control system are not perfect and I know that because of my engineering."

Which leads to an interesting question, however: If there is a collision instigated by a driverless car which is determined to be the result of an imperfect control system but still results in injury or death of a person, is that to be simply overlooked as an "accident" (your term) with no liability? I believe that this is precisely the legal issue at hand.

I'm worried about the "huge lawsuits" as I commented to CG, some neo-luddite jury will ignore long standing liability guidelines and aware a fortune in punitive damages. We treat car accidents far differently from product liability. You can lose control of your vehicle and plow into a car carrying a family and kill them all and there are ways of evaluating the cost -- but if the car company knew there was a flaw in the steering mechanism and didn't fix it, the same accident would generate vastly different outcomes.