Nobody is going to die from a 5 mph collision. It's not even likely to break any bones. At 30 mph, the chance of death is still only 5%!

There may still be reasons to prefer robot cars for low-speed environments but the probability of such a vehicle striking and killing a pedestrian is already very low, so that is not relevant to a discussion of a robot car's ability to stop very rapidly at very low speeds.

http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/HS809012.htm...