Why is it preferable to wait for people to die and then sue the company instead of banning it in the first place?

People die in car crashes all the time. Self driving can kill a lot of people and still be vastly better than humans.

They don't have to die first. The company can avoid the expense by planning how not to kill people.

If you charged car makers $20m per pedestrian killed by their cars regardless of fault you'd probably see much safer designs.

We cannot even properly ban asbestos, expecting people to die first is just having a realistic perspective on how the US government works WRT regulations.

This doc from 1999 has an answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiB8GVMNJkE

Usually its capitalism, because in America, they can just buy carveouts after the fact.