Now imagine the other autonomous cars following it have to make an urgent decision; go straight or swerve out of the way. Imagine the only somewhat clear path has some innocent people on it, and the alternative is basically to let the car end up as a giant fireball after it hits whatever's in front.
You can try and avoid similar situations as much as possible, by having the car figure out what's going on ahead and do things to avoid it (change lane, slow down, etc). But the situation isn't avoidable all the time. If something happens close to you and you're going down a motorway at 70mph, then physics alone says the car cannot stop in time. It will have to decide then to either take the risk or get obliterated.
It's not pathological stupidity, it's often bad luck. And in cases like that, the driver is right to assume the vehicle won't sacrifice them for others.
I don't consider that an unpopular opinion, at all, thank you very much.
In reality, these questions don't take into account the fact that humans don't actually even make decisions in these situations. People don't choose whether to kill that child or swerve into oncoming traffic--they don't even react in time for there to be an option or the reflexively jerk away without thought. Truckers don't get time to consider whether they're going to kill other people on the road with a jackknife or roll when they have to do a sudden avoidance maneuver.
Autonomous cars are going to be so much better at avoiding situations preemptively that you will have to be pathologically stupid to be able to put an autonomous car into such a situation. And, if you are that stupid, YOU deserve to die.