The fundamental problem of self-driving cars in cities is that they are expected to be 100% safe. They could be 10 times as safe as regular cars, but it wouldn't save them from headlines of "robot car kills an innocent person". And given how chaotic and unpredictable situation on the roads in a densely populated city without designated spaces for cyclists can be, 100% safety is impossible. Even if AI itself if perfec…
I feel like that might be built atop two deeper concerns:
1. People worry that ways and times they are unsafe (separate from overall rates) will be unusual, less-predictable, or involve a novel risk-profile.
2. If it's autonomous, then accidents kinda weird-out our sense of blame and justice. When it fails, is it always the owner's fault and liability--even though the workings are impenetrable to the average person--or does the manufacturer have some blame? Do we each imagine that outcome would be fair if we were the one on the hook for our car doing something weird we didn't even intend?
Using regular cars as contrast, #1 is something predictable--or at least we delude ourselves into thinking it's predictable--and #2 has less disturbing ambiguity.