I agree mostly with what you are saying, just not the undertone that this infortunate accident is somehow evidence of AVs "causing" more deaths than human drivers.
So yes, it's quite possible for autonomous vehicles to cause vastly more deaths than human drivers even while being slaves to the rules. Hell, you could do it too as a human driver if you removed your conscience. Just don't hit the brakes the next time you have the right of way and a jaywalker steps out in front of you. You'll easily kill someone within a week and have it be their "fault".
That's why I think the real self-driving car problem is a very special case of the Turing Test--one that might be more difficult to win or solve.
That's the thing - every driver has faced those situations, hundreds, thousands of times. Odds are very good a failure one of those times would have significant penalty for any driver, even if it wasn't their fault.
That doesn't mean that the Uber system wasn't dangerously defective and that a fit foservice self-driving system would have noticed in time to react (which may not have been sufficient to avert a collision, and may not have prevented a fatality, but given the speeds involved would have significantly reduced the risk of fatality.
That the pedestrian should not have entered the roadway where and when they did may relieve Uber of legal liability for this collision, it doesn't stop the failure to react at all from being evidence of a critical safety flaw.
And, had the same thing happened at an equally poorly lit, not specially marked, intersection in many jurisdictions (including California, not sure about Arizona), Uber would be legally at fault because of pedestrian right of way. If Uber's system can't see and react to people in dark clothes at night, it's not even remotely suitable for use, at least at night.
Interesting! What reasons do you have to think this is an unpopular opinion? To me, it sounds like an obvious conclusion.