To be fair though, iterative is usually the way to go. We didn't get to the safety levels that airliners currently have by sitting down with books and, we got

To be fair though, iterative is usually the way to go. We didn't get to the safety levels that airliners currently have by sitting down with books and, we got there by having the NTSB thoroughly analyze each incident. Humans are terrible drivers, so each day we delay the transition to self-driving also costs lives, it's just that human traffic fatalities are less visible since society generally accepts that level of death.