> I'm sure that a large portion of people would still be really irrational about it and that worries me a lot

I used to think that. The Tesla AutoPilot accidents have inspired no such reaction, though. The moment might come more when a self-driving car is used by a terrorist or school shooter as a getaway vehicle than because of someone getting mowed down by an errant algorithm, the latter being a cause of death we've been relatively numbed to.

Even if the cumulative amounts of fatal accidents is reduced, certain types of accidents happen less, if different types of accidents happen more often, say accelerating into a wall uncontrollably, that is not optimal. I worry that we will accept 'slightly better' as good enough, along with the consequences that come with it.

At some point, economics and actuaries come into play. It will be worrying when 'AI is safer than humans!' can be pointed to as a reason to not correct expensive, perhaps intractable, AI failures.

That’s all in a hypothetical future in which autonomous vehicles work as intended, are well tested, and are better than people. We’re still nowhere near that kind of lvl 5 automation, and just testing on open roads.

Be careful of the utopia trap: “anything is acceptable now for the rosy future imagined.”