Autonomous cars could actually lead to increases in road deaths (or at least, less pressure to improve road safety, and hence less potential reduction in deaths), because people would be far less invested in the accident. There would always be someone else to potentially blame: the manufacturer of the vehicle, the programmer of the software, the creators of the sensors, or even the owner of the vehicle not cleaning the sensors enough. Every party could make a compelling case for why someone else was the cause of the death. There would be more people with blood on their hands, but those people would feel less responsible and be even further removed from the actual incident.