The auto industry has trillions of dollars spent giving everyone cars, and we don't really dwell much on road safety. And cars kill a crazy number of people.

The present day is _after_ huge amounts of effort and investment in road safety, and it's an ongoing process. Complete with technological mandates like lane-keeping. It's something which is a major factor in car design and has safety boards such as the NTSP and Euro NCAP.

AI is .. before such an effort.

Locally, that’s a fait accompli. Car ownership has been ubiquitous in the US for decades. Traffic deaths per capita are increasing a bit in the US but are still below where they were in the 90s, and most developed countries have seen significant decreases. I don’t really know what the discourse is like in countries where traffic deaths might actually be increasing significantly from a tiny baseline.

We focus a lot more on road safety than we do on AI. Drivers have to have licenses, there are regulations about car construction and trade, etc.

you don't spend a lot of time around urbanists, do you?

The name Ralph Nader should ring a bell for you hopefully. There was one point that we didn't spend much on road safety and if that death rate per mile remained the same as then for how much we drive now, almost everyone that you knew that died would have done so in a car accident.