>>I think as a a society we (begrudgingly) make allowances for human error. There is zero solace for a death at the hands of an algorithm.

There is zero solace for a death caused by senseless drivers either. With machines and algorithms you can at least hope they would improve in the future. Humans won't. There will always be a small % of terrible ones.

Imo we should allow (and then enforce) self driving even if machines are still worse than humans (they aren't) because that's the only path we have and the sooner we start walking it the better.