It seems like the person you're responding to believes that the deaths from low-quality self-driving cars will cause the technology to not come to fruition, saving less lives in the long run.

We are already "letting more people die" for economic reasons. We could mandate that all cars on the road should have the most modern 15+ airbag systems, but it's too costly. We could mandate that the speed limit should be 30mph and limited in hardware, but it's too costly economically, yet I don't think anyone can argue that it wouldn't save lives.

We make these exact choices all the time. I am saying we should "let more people die" now, so that we can save more later. That's not a novel concept.

Right? Every single economic decision we make could be framed as a 'letting people die' choice.