I feel that this sentiment could be applied to almost anything and isn't really meaningful. Almost every accident ever could be attributed to negligence somewhere.
I think the point here is a firearm in particular is designed to project deadly force and should be treated as such. If someone "accidentally" shoots someone, it means they were negligent in their treatment of the instrument in their hand.
Autonomous vehicles are expected to be able to safely navigate a large variety of streets and highways, and possibly trails and countryside in the future, without killing anybody else around or killing the people inside, nor destroying the fixtures and buildings that make up your typical city street. The only problem is cars are inherently deadly, go look up the number of people that have died in automobile "accidents" since the automobile was invented, total it up for just one country. They need to be treated with and afforded the same respect as any other instrument intended to project deadly force, because they do, as do whatever algorithms are controlling the instrument.
