There is little basis to declare human drivers 'fundamentally unsafe' given the proportion of accidents pales in comparison to the gigantic volume of vehicles on roads worldwide over varied road and traffic conditions.
It can be speculated automated vehicles may require constraints on roads in which case it becomes apples to oranges. And human drivers equipped with the kind of technology and sensors on self driven cars would be much safer.
While computers lack human weaknesses, they bring a slew of new ones. Computers have no situational awareness, no context, are vulnerable to hacking, respond in predetermined ways which can be manipulated or abused, etc.
There just is not enough evidence to make the claim that ubiquitous autonomous cars will be any safer than human drivers on shared roads. There are many known unknowns and who knows how many unknown unknowns left to discover and mitigate with this tech.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/17/laying-a-trap-for-self-dri...
Today that is true. I am speculating when I say that autonomous vehicles will be safer than humans drivers. There is enough effort going into developing them that we will soon have that data though.
Google's data is already showing promise that the autonomous car is likely to be safer, but they don't have enough miles to be significant.
> There is little basis to declare human drivers 'fundamentally unsafe' given the proportion of accidents pales in comparison to the gigantic volume of vehicles on roads worldwide over varied road and traffic conditions.
10.6 deaths per 100,000 people is enough for me to call humans fundamentally unsafe. (though cancer and other medical conditions are bigger)
Since humans cannot be equipped with the sensors a computer can (ie eyes on the back of your head) it isn't fair to compare the as if situation.