>Is there any reason we can't just rely on autonomous cars in areas where these edge cases don't happen?

Because there are still ripple effects to doing this affecting areas with edge cases.

So let's say you've reduced the number of manual-driven cars. That has implications for:

* Economies of scale. Autonomous cars will likely be of a different design than manual ones so the price of a manual-drive will likely increase- where will the increased money to buy them come from?

* Insurance costs. Drivers in less-dense cities are currently safer than the national average: what does the risk and cost for a safer driver become now that the bad urban driver benchmark disappears?

* Government regulation and other politicking. What happens to everyone else in, say, California or New York State or a European country if an urban-focused legislature creates laws restricting ownership/use of a manual-driven car in some way (anything from a tax to an outright ban)?

Whether these implications are small or large (or whether they cancel each other) isn't adequately answered right now; but I suspect that at least one (or all 3) will turn out to be a major hindrance to autonomous car deployment. Or they don't, and some section of the population gets screwed anyway.

Luckily there is already seemingly an oversupply of human-drivable cars (in both automatic and standard, aka "manual" transmission) today. The price of a working car has dropped so low that it is barely above the scrap price, and people turn their nose up at such perfectly working cars. The human-driving enthusiast will have plenty of material available for decades, and this is before even factoring in the great reduction in competition said enthusiast will face in the marketplace as most people begin to demand self-driving cars and turn their nose up at a 2016 human-driven camry without self-driving the same way they turn their noses up today at a 1999 camry that lacks features they think so essential like automated lane maintenance, push button start, heated seats, or whatever half ass features car manufacturers keep coming up with in order to con $20,000 out of the gullible.

> * Economies of scale. Autonomous cars will likely be of a different design than manual ones so the price of a manual-drive will likely increase- where will the increased money to buy them come from?

I'm not sure how big of a threat that is. The design ought not need to be so different that the same production lines can't easily make both versions. Relative to many newer cars (anything drive-by-wire), autonomy probably only requires the addition of sensors and a computer. Even getting rid of the steering wheel and all driving controls could probably be done modularly on a car model that's offered in both self-driving and traditional options.

> Economies of scale. Autonomous cars will likely be of a different design than manual ones so the price of a manual-drive will likely increase- where will the increased money to buy them come from?

The people who continue to buy manually driven cars, I presume.

> Insurance costs. Drivers in less-dense cities are currently safer than the national average: what does the risk and cost for a safer driver become now that the bad urban driver benchmark disappears?

They will be benchmarked against more dangerous suburban drivers (e.g. Marylanders) instead.

>what does the risk and cost for a safer driver become now that the bad urban driver benchmark disappears?

I am not sure if an autonomous car will be safer. I mean, can they even do panic breaking right now (For example, if someone or something jumps in front of the car?). You know, safety is often not about having the fastest reaction time, but also about having good anticipation that any decent human driver will develop in a short time....

I think any hopes that cars will be better than humans at it is quite naive...

> I am not sure if an autonomous car will be safer. I mean, can they even do panic breaking right now (For example, if someone or something jumps in front of the car?). You know, safety is often not about having the fastest reaction time, but also about having good anticipation that any decent human driver will develop in a short time.... I think any hopes that cars will be better than humans at it is quite naive...

Even if we assume that cars won't be as good at stopping from people jumping in front of them, I would bet the number of accidents that happen from something like that are significantly smaller than the number of accidents from human error like texting while driving, being drunk, or just not paying attention due to fatigue or whatever else.

Not to mention, how can you really even tell the difference between someone who's walking towards your car but will stop and someone who isn't? Not even humans can do that since we can't read minds.

I think you'd be surprised at how many people "test" Google's self driving cars.

Pretty sure they can handle it if someone jumps in front of them simply because people play chicken with them.

I searched, but couldn't find one video that demonstrates this. I mean, I was not expecting someone to throw themselves infront of a car and video it hoping it would stop in time. but I thought someone might have tested this using a dummy...Found nothing yet...