Regulators at some point defer to voters. It’s going to matter much more what voters are led to believe than what the numbers say.

I hope not. I expect them to produce cars that are much better than the average human before setting them free on the road.

That is the rational choice given the human psyche.

We can barely even convince people that vaccines are good.

If companies rush this (as Tesla and Uber already has!) too much the backlash will likely set back self-driving unnecessarily.

I believe a more careful approach will get broader adoption and likely save more lives.

I didn't suggest that the technology should be rushed and I agree that a careful approach can save more lives. But what constitutes "careful" matters here. For example if a city chooses to offer robotaxi discounts to people with bad driving records (before some cutoff date to avoid perverse incentives) then even an average taxi fleet could be a net-benefit even though the taxis do not perform better than the general population. And that's just in terms of lives saved, not counting the other benefits of having cheap transportation.