And someone rear ended me the other day because they didn't notice cars were stopping. Yes, self-driving cars make mistakes, but humans make all sorts of mistakes, too.
The question is, do self driving cars have more accidents per mile (or more damage per mile/injuries per mile/ deaths per mile) than human driven cars?
"activating auto steer increased crash rate by 50%"
Tesla safety stats are ok when compared to the average car on the road. But that's because they are expensive, high quality cars driven by middle aged people. It's the safest car demographic on the road. When comparing auto drive teslas to equivalent luxury cars they look terrible. Though i think if you ignore the autodrive they're perfectly good cars.
They are absolutely not "less safe", because they are all human driven cars.
Why not say the rest of your argument with the fact that cruise control made cars "less safe than human driven cars" because people fell asleep at the wheel and drifted off the road.
Self-driving cars don't take risks when they make mistakes while humans are exposed to physical or legal consequences that are well understood by everyone on the road.
I know self driving cars feel different to us now, but they aren't really different in kind, just degree. I am sure people felt these concerns when cars were introduced in general.
It should matter if they have less, but in the real world it doesn't matter, because it's "scary" to be rear-ended by an unthinking machine, and business as usual to be rear-ended by a clumsy human, so people will always hold machines to a much higher standard.
Human makes a mistake, they could have been tired, distracted, got something in their eye, or anything else.
Machine makes a mistake, it becomes a question of why and will it make that same mistake every time?