I think autonomous driving advocates would do well to look at the history of computer handwriting recognition, an easier technical problem with lower consequences that received significant investment over decades. But it has never gotten good enough to succeed in the marketplace against alternatives.
Why? It never exceeded consumer expectations, which are extremely high for automated systems. Even a correctness rate of 99.9% means multiple errors per day for most people. Consumers expected approximately zero errors, despite not being able to achieve that themselves, sometimes even with their own handwriting!
Because handwriting is made by humans, there is some percentage of it that simply cannot be reliably recognized at all. But people hold that against computers more than other people because computers are supposed to be labor saving devices.
Likewise because roads are made by people, and other cars are driven by people, so a self driving car will never be able to be perfectly safe. But that is essentially what advocates are promising.
That’s especially true if people expect the same level of convenience, especially in terms of time. People speed and take risks all the time when driving, in the name of saving time. I think it’s likely that an autonomous car optimized for safety would also be a car that just takes a lot longer to get anywhere with.
Speed matters. It’s a big reason we all use touch keyboards on our phones instead of handwriting recognition.