I was told that driverless cars would not be in my lifetime, and that a machine would not beat a human at Go in my lifetime. We'll see.
Two motorcycles are coming towards the self-driving car, and the car is forced to crash into one of them. One of the motorcyclists is not wearing his helmet, and there's a definite chance of fatal injury if crashed into by a car. By not wearing his helmet, he is also breaking the law.
The other motorcyclist is wearing her helmet, and there's less of a chance of fatal injuries.
Should the self-driving car crash into the law-abiding motorcyclist who is doing everything right but with a less chance of fatal injuries, or into the irresponsible non-helmet wearing motorcyclist where injuries could be fatal?
That's the kind of scenarios they have to deal with. The technology however, works.
Just drive safely. Keep your distance and be very good at reducing your own speed as fast and as safe as possible.
Even in this hypothetical it will certainly help reducing the speed as the motorcycles will have a better chance to react.
What about the question of whether to swerve into traffic to avoid a kid who ran into the street from between two parked cars?
Answer: you were going too fast to begin with. If you're travelling anywhere that this is a possibility, your maximum speed should be less than 20mph. A collision at that speed is almost never fatal. That speed also allows almost instant braking.
The fact that autonomous cars will be driving so slow and defensively in the suburbs will perhaps be the biggest cause for the coming backlash against them.
As for self-driving cars, they do work under good conditions but we still are at least a decade away. Plenty of people became optimistic about self-driving cars after the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge 11 years ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005)
Cascading discoveries are already hard to think through very far, but discoveries that accelerate the pace at which we make discoveries make the whole thing very chaotic.