http://www.riotinto.com/ourcommitment/spotlight-18130_18328....
I'd argue that the shit self driving cars we have right now are ALREADY statistically safer than humans.
You don't have to be perfect. Just better than an average driver. And average drivers are drunk, sleep deprived, and texting. That is a very low bar to pass.
Even if they were much more dangerous, there is still a huge market. Safely, is arguably pretty low on the list of things that consumers care about.
The problem with self driving cars right now is purely political.
But even that isn't insurmountable. All you have to do is release in a low government regulation red state, like Arizona.
And then the rest of the country will follow, once everyone in Arizona starts using them and realize how awesome they are.
There is far more money in automating long-distance trucking. My bet is the first real use of self-driving "cars" will be for trucks. The human driver can sleep, eat a meal, etc but will remain on-board for safety's sake and dealing with unanticipated edge cases (e.g. the AI wakes up the driver when it runs into a traffic jam due to an accident. The AI can probably recognize cop cars, flares, etc but won't be able to navigate the scene of the accident while responding to instructions from police officers)
The next small step will be "follower" trucks. The lead truck has a human driver same as before, but one or two AI-driven trucks follow. They do their best to track the human driver's response to unexpected situations. Worst-case, they pull over and flag the human driver who pulls over and uses a VR rig to pilot them past the problem.
Meanwhile the application of "self-driving" technology to cars over the next 10 years will be to avoid accidents, not to actually be self-driving.
Will we have fully autonomous vehicles within 50 years? Almost certainly. Will we have them in the next 5? Almost certainly not.