If one more incident happens like this within another week, it will be an epidemic and self-driving cars are finished.
2030 is coming soon, and people have short memories.
In other words, yes, you will have high-tech enclaves ("works around Chandler because we already know how to drive there"); they will be minor compared to the rest of the world still living in 20th century (if even that). Try driving a SDC outside the population centers - this is literally uncharted territory. "But but but cities are hard, everything else is EASY!" Oh yeah? Once SDVs venture out in the open, we'll see another wave of deaths (beyond the one that begins now): "car drove itself off badly marked road", "car stranded itself and did something profoundly stupid" etc.
Driving with exact maps takes off one of the hard parts; having a point cloud of the entire continent sounds improbable.
No pedestrians to worry about, crashes easier to avoid, no mixing of autonomous and active traffic, and faster travel times.
If we're talking safety, thousands of low-flying objects in dense urban areas is not a good idea in the foreseeable future. And certainly not in public perception.
How is it more dangerous than 12 lane autonomous intersections?
Until such laws and tests are devised, the all testing of SDVs on real roads should be suspended..
Why are people not asking/demanding this?
I think that car that would drive themselves below 1mph would already make people happy. You can move things around near house, near stores, near office. At speed that are near danger free. And it feels a tad exciting as consumer experience.
Sad, given that we don't even know if Autopilot was on during this crash, and yet people immediately assume this is a self-driving issue.
Eventually, autonomous vehicles will come around but in a much more measured and cautious deployment, as opposed to the VC cash fueled headlong rush we are currently experiencing.