If self driving cars follow the airline model we won't see them for, at best, decades. That is decades of 40k deaths a year in the current human driven model. Self driving cars have the potential to drop that dramatically, but only if we actually develop them.

Everything has a cost. Not changing has a cost. Changing has a cost. Weighing those two is important. If you only cite the costs of changing without considering the costs of not changing you will never change and always believe you are making the right choice.