No, comparing against a general population average is way too low, because automated cars won't randomly replace drivers. They need to be at least as good as th

No, comparing against a general population average is way too low, because automated cars won't randomly replace drivers. They need to be at least as good as the sort of good driver that self-driving cars would replace. Taxi drivers, for example, are much better drivers than average people. Further, I think a variety of factors, including politics and liability structures, mean self-driving cars will have to be radically better than the average human driver. For example, each car-caused death is seen as the responsibility of some human. But every Waymo death will be seen as the responsibility of Waymo. Responsibility for the current 100 deaths per day is diffuse, and so accepted. But if it's 40 deaths per day for Waymo and 60 for Musk, nobody's going to shrug at that.