See earlier note about the public not accepting autonomous vehicles while they make errors humans consider nonsensical. The actual aggregated stats don't matter. The logic doesn't matter. All that matters is the video of a self-driving car veering off course suddenly and slamming into a school or bumping a pedestrian at high speed on video. It won't matter that no kids got hurt or that the pedestrian survived with minor injuries.
It will feel more dangerous and untrustworthy, and that has always been more than enough to kill a promising solution in this country.
If we can overcome that and actually follow the numbers instead of our guts, we won't need most of the cars in the first place—autonomous or otherwise—because the numbers say mass transit is the better option on all metrics: economic, environmental, safety, land use, etc. Cars are at best a backfill option.
The general public doesn't have to accept anything because they still have a choice to use whatever car they want. It's only the drunk drivers being forced in those evil autonomous cars, and they would have otherwise killed themselves/others anyways if left on their own. And then over time the safety numbers, convenience and more will speak for themselves and convince you to switch.
It will feel more dangerous and untrustworthy, and that has always been more than enough to kill a promising solution in this country.
If we can overcome that and actually follow the numbers instead of our guts, we won't need most of the cars in the first place—autonomous or otherwise—because the numbers say mass transit is the better option on all metrics: economic, environmental, safety, land use, etc. Cars are at best a backfill option.