I suggest everyone take a look at the most recent available NHTSA data to help create informed opinions on the topic of car safety with respect to fatal accident causes:

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

My personal takeaways:

1) The sum of speeding + alcohol is 55% of the total number of fatalities. Self driving cars won't get drunk (we hope) and speeding is something which could certainly be limited in software. Lots of reasons to believe self driving will make a significant impact here, whenever it finally arrives.

On the other hand, you don't really need self driving to prevent these. You could force all vehicles to have a breathalizer interlock before driving (assuming these devices could be made to be very accurate and not spoofable, I believe these are both technically feasible goals). Or just enforce the living daylights out of it - driving drunk, lose your license for the rest of your life. Not nice I suppose but neither are ten thousand deaths per year. Speeding is a similar story. Why not put a GPS device in every car (I think this may already be the case) and geo-fence speed limits? Technically very feasible. Some people will claim you need to speed sometimes but I believe these arguments to be total bullshit. Ambulances may need to speed sometimes. Or again just enforce the living daylights out of it. Speeding over 5MPH above the speed limit, license gone for the rest of your life. Not nice I suppose but neither are ten thousand deaths per year.

We probably won't do any of the non-self driving things I mentioned above because they are politically untenable in America. Death on the roads is such a normalized facet of modern life that most people don't really consider the alternative: limited loss of freedom with many fewer deaths and injuries.

2) The wearing of seat-belts seems to still be a big problem for some people. 44% of motor vehicle occupants who died were not wearing one. No self driving needed here. In fact, this problem is somewhat orthogonal to self-driving. You would still want to be restrained in a self driving car. It would be easy enough to create an occupant sensor and seat belt interlock to operate the car. The car already beeps at you if you're not wearing it. Why not take the beeping a step further.

3) Running into cyclists (both motorized and human-powered) is also a reasonably large problem. Self driving will almost certainly help here (uber's incident not withstanding) but there are non technological solutions to consider. What about increasing the liability for drivers who injure or kill cyclists? What about steep criminal penalties for hitting a cyclist?

4) There isn't even a category for "mechanical failure". Cars don't really crash due to problems with the car per-se. Or at least not a rates that matter compared to the others.

5) Rural driving seems pretty dangerous - 50% of fatalities but only 19% of the population lives there. I don't think they dig into the details here but I'd be interested to see the cause breakdown for rural users. Growing up in Wisconsin, driving home drunk from rural bars was basically ubiquitous. I always advise to stay off the roads around bar time if possible.

It is important to consider that our roads are unsafe mostly because of the system of policies we have set up governing them. We still aren't serious enough about drunk driving. The debate around safety and speeding is hardly even happening. Hitting and killing non-automobile road users is often just a traffic citation. The licensing system is a joke. In what other safety-critical certification system can you take one exam at age 16 and then renew your certification for the rest of your life without any kind of additional training or examination? There is a ton we _could_ be doing outside of self-driving technology to make the roads safer.

Personal preferences on the above discussion: FOR self driving cars, even ones that are only marginally safer than humans. FOR geo-fenced speed limits. FOR breathlizers in all vehicles. FOR steep penalties for drunk driving, speeding, and killing non-automobile road users. FOR much more stringent licensing requirements. Death on the roads ought not be a feature of modern life.