Maybe, but the "upside" of humans being such terrible drivers is that we've almost all either gotten into a bad accident, or know someone close who has. The fact that it's not going to be hard to empirically prove a difference between machine reliability in this case, and human reliability may help as well.

Unfortunately... I think the big issue is going to be pure anxiety; a bigger and more immediate form of what a lot of people experience on an airplane. Giving up even the illusion of control is supremely hard for us as a species, in general. Then there's just the fact that as a species we're terrible at risk assessment.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_ris...