>This model shows that rolling out just as safe or a little safer partially-autonomous vehicles by 2020 will save 160,000 more lives over 50 years than a scenario that waits until 2025 to roll out almost perfect autonomous vehicles. Delaying the roll-out of partially-autonomous vehicles costs lives.
Sure, rolling out autonomous vehicles will save lives if you assume that they are safer than humans. But right now all the evidence points to autonomous vehicles being substantially more dangerous than humans. Waymo reports disengagements every 5,500 miles, and estimates that something like 10% disengagements would have led to a collision.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...
And taken as a whole, self-driving cars have already killed one person with only about 10 million miles driven. It would take the average human driver more than 100 million miles to kill someone.
Edit: My comment refers to safety of level 4/5 autonomy, not the current Tesla Autopilot.
The real interesting question is whether it's worth it to deploy dangerous cars, risking today's lives to help save future lives. It's not that interesting to ask whether deploying hypothetically safer cars will save lives.