Indeed, it's probably best not to measure the utility of this tech based on preemptive predictions of how an emotional public will react or the reactions of outrage-driven media with terribly short attention spans.

The actual performance of these machines will be the ultimate test. If it does consistently improve safety then I don't really see much barriers existing here, the current unknowns and semantics surrounding it will be worked out in markets and in courts over an extended period of time and will ultimately be (primarily) driven by rationality in the long run.