Let’s say autonomous cars, once fully implemented, are even 10% safer than existing drivers. And testing in real-world conditions, speeds up the implementation by even just a year. We would need about 3k deaths at the hands of the autonomous drivers before the trade off was no longer worth it. This is only considering the US. And based on very conservative estimates of 10% improvement and a reduction of only a year savings in time to deploy. The more likely scenario will put that number in the 10s of thousands in my opinion.
Personally, I would much rather we slowly develop and deploy these cars in the wild rather than continue testing in some controlled environments. At least this way we can monitor progress and judge their readiness as a society. Plus, the sooner they happen, the better for everyone.
You're trying to do math in a scenario where you have no real numbers. Of course you can pull some stuff out of your butt (+10%, 1 year) to say it's going to save lives but unless you can justify those numbers it's meaningless.
The point is not the exact numbers. It’s to demonstrate that even if we do suffer accidents and deaths from testing self-driving cars on the road, the end result will be many more saved lives (just based on the fact of how many people die from traffic accidents today) Of course this hinges on many other factors to be true, but that’s the case with all kinds of technological advances.
Personally, I would much rather we slowly develop and deploy these cars in the wild rather than continue testing in some controlled environments. At least this way we can monitor progress and judge their readiness as a society. Plus, the sooner they happen, the better for everyone.