In the long term, if all cars are autonomous and communicating, it's reasonable to think that most situations could be handled by carefully coordinated group action so that no one is injured. (Especially in the example given in the article - if only one car has a problem, the others should compensate.)

In the near term, though? For legal reasons it might be necessary to hand control immediately to a human driver to let them make the decision.

Or perhaps far, far more stringent inspection requirements could help mitigate some of this?