I think firstly it's going to be tough with long-tail edge case deaths to really be sure the numbers will be less than human drivers until self-driving cars are unleashed in sufficient numbers.

Secondly, even if you're right (and you may well be) - imagine that a common edge case was a small child jumping out in front of the car. Would we want to accept a vehicle that consistently ran them over? The raw numbers might be better but that doesn't fully paint a picture of what those numbers would look like.

I also think the 'will randomly kill people, but rarely' aspect of self-driving cars will be majorly off-putting on a very human level.

And finally there's a perception issue here - the self-driving hype is around the idea that the car is effectively being driven by a far better driver than a human, the second it turns out it does really crazy things sometimes (doesn't even have to involve fatalities necessarily) is also going to put people off I think.

I personally prefer the idea of driver assists (responsibly developed so drivers aren't just distracted) aiding driver safety while we work on a supplemental self-driving solution, or perhaps as discussed in the article create some infrastructure along roads to make things more certain.

I am far from being against self-driving cars, I just feel the timeline is longer than currently hyped.