There is also sometimes a disconnect between perceived risk by the driver and the actual risk. How we design roads can have a large effect on this. If people are regularly exceeding the speed limit, you designed your road wrong.

Or you set the speed limit too low.

Road design and speed limits supposedly goes hand in hand.

Generally we drivers are very poor at judging acceptable risk, like iffy weather conditions where we will feel pressure to keep that annoying tail-gaiter from overtaking even thou they are driving as if the conditions were optimal. Why? Time constrains of appointments or just a need to get home quickly. Then a myriad of things; stress, lack of sleep, boredom, age, health, hunger, intoxicants. We don't parse any of these risks at all well given the real conditions, as evidenced by the road toll. Removing human foibles from everyday transport should make driving steadily safer just as automated systems have for flying or rail, etc.

As for the liability, perhaps some portion of the reduction of insurance costs for damages to health and property can be funneled into a fund for mitigating wherever improvements are most needed across the sector generally including signage, road markings, code audits, sensor checks and so on. A small levy on the autonomous car's insurance should do the trick.

My point is that: It's common for reasonably smart individuals to exceed speed limits, despite the fact that:

- the speed limit is 130 km/h

- it only shortens the trip by 1-2 minutes

- it's bad for the environment

I suspect they many of my decisions aren't remotely rational.