I merged hard right before it was clear. I assumed the car on my right would do the same, and the driver further behind would break in time. They either made the same assumptions as me or took my queues and acted accordingly and everything turned out ok.

It is pretty amazing how people can coordinate on-the-fly.

However, the human has the major advantage of having a brain and being able to understand the consequences and potential outcomes of something in real-time as it is unfolding. I doubt most autopilots would understand the situations I mentioned - certainly not unless they were specifically pre-programmed/trained into the system. Would an autopilot even see what is going on inside a car if a driver is bending down below dashboard, or fighting with passenger, for example?

If we had the same lawyers available that Tesla does, humans too would be not responsible for much of anything.