> Would you get in a self-driving car in a dense urban environment such as New York City? [...] Would you get in one such car if you had alternatives?
I fortunately do have alternatives and accordingly mostly don't take cars at all.
But given the necessity/opportunity: Definitely. Being in a car, even (or especially) with a dubious driver, is much safer (at NYC traffic speeds) than being a pedestrian sharing the road with it.
And that's my entire point: Self-driving cars, like cars in general, are potentially a much larger danger to others (cyclists, pedestrians) than they are to their passengers.
That said, I don't especially distrust the self-driving kind – I've tried Waymo before and felt like it handled tricky situations at least as well as some Uber or Lyft drivers I've had before. They seem to have a lot more precision equipment than camera-only based Teslas, though.
