True but humans are a known quantity. For the first time, we are letting 'something else' drive that thinks completely different to us, yet we are entrusting our lives to it.
Because of our incredible image processing ability we can deal with a lot of shit that we may come across while driving. But the computer still has a lot of catching up to do in this department. Do you really want your life to end because an AI can't distinguish between a white lorry in the way and an empty road? It is an unnerving choice to have to make I think.
It's no less unnerving than going on a plane mostly piloted by computers that rockets through the sky at several hundred miles an hour. There will always be people that fear the loss of control but most people will realize that the convenience is worth giving such a thing up considering that once this technology is perfected you will ideally have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying in a car accident.
It's a bit odd to compare self driving cars (which have to constantly evaluate their surroundings, change direction, and avoid obstacles such as parents and kids) to a machine that flies through the air with zero obstacles, has a minimum of three people at the helm, and they each have at least 1500 flight hours of training under their belt as an airline first officer first.
That's not really true though is it? The human miles take into account all sorts of driving conditions, while self-driving car miles are only from the safest and easiest driving conditions. Doesn't seem apples to apples to me.
Even if we ignore the apples and oranges comparison, it's still not true; I think someone calculated it'd require almost 300 million miles of autonomous driving without deaths to know the death rate was actually lower, and Tesla's first death happened rather sooner than that.
