I think this is key. There may be a lot of autonomous cars in the future but they will come from a handful of companies who will face public pressure not to program them to allow grossly wasteful or antisocial behavior.
One hopes. But one could also say: they will come from a handful of companies that will endeavor to make it seem that _the things that are most profitable for them and convenient for their customers_ are one and the same as the public interest.
There are already narratives at hand that will make this easier: "40,000 lives a year!", etc.
I've gone from being kind of excited about robot cars to realizing that we will have to be very vigilant.
"Last year, Senator McClellan caused 40,000 people to die by voting against the Make AV Companies Invulnerable Act"
That's not a concern, considering that the narrative right now is that self-driving cars are dangerous. Given the number of accidents and fatalities, the entire self-driving car industry would need to go an entire year without a single accident of any kind to even come close to claiming that they are as safe as a bad human driver.
Uber's crash is the only fatality I'm aware of in a truly self-driving car.