I think we are perfectly capable of producing very safe self-driving cars, on a technological level. We have nearly automated other means of transportation that

I think we are perfectly capable of producing very safe self-driving cars, on a technological level. We have nearly automated other means of transportation that we consider to be among the safest ones nowadays. The problem may be that we are trying to solve a lack of hardware using software. Level 4/5 self-driving probably requires specific infrastructure to be installed on all roads, a way to coordinate collision resolution among all cars of all manufacturers (something similar to TCAS in aviation, but operating with a higher number of vehicles involved and on a much shorter time frame), and most likely a ban on non self-driving cars. Of course, this carries an economical and social cost that is unacceptable nowadays. So we are trying to make self-driving cars work on an infrastructure that was never designed for automated use (and sometimes even makes human drivers confused), by giving a regular car with a few extra sensors to an AI driver and trying to get it to achieve human-like capabilities as an intelligent agent, which is beyond our technological ability at the moment.