I think you're making OPs point for them. Real drivers also crash into things. Self-driving cars don't have to be perfect all of the time. Inebriated and distracted drivers already cause disproportionate problems: self-driving, even one that makes a mistake once in a blue moon, is preferable than some dude on their phone who hasn't noticed the traffic in front of them has slowed down. (And 120 km/h sounds like highway cruising: precisely the sort of place where self-driving cars have a relatively easy time and "better than humans" is not very far off from where we are today.)
The dude on their phone is not comparable to the an AV carrying a family of 5 unpredictably veering into a concrete divider. One is negligent, the other has done nothing and could have done nothing, they only trusted the system. How do you reconcile it as merely a question of numbers then? So you trade 100 human-error accidents for 5 "blue moon" AV accidents, and this is good because it's statistically much safer. But that's also 5 accidents that wouldn't have happened to safe, diligent drivers.
It's the only bar. Considering the regular person overconfidence in their ability they will either want something that doesn't crash ever or if it crashes it has to bring about other advantages such as speed.
Eg. Same rate of self driving crashes with an avg. speed of 100mph as human 40mph.
Like putting your Mercedes in the hands of Lewis Hamilton. People won't have any problem doing that, because they understand that Hamilton is a much better driver than them. If it's close people won't relinquish control, at least when sober.
> Robo-Perfection or Robot Lewis Hamilton is the bar for a sober person (especially guys) to let go of the wheel.
It obviously isn't as there are many people who have jumped through many hoops to get access to self-driving software that is much worse than Lewis Hamilton (i.e. Tesla FSD beta). Clearly different people have different standards for what they consider safe enough to let it drive for them.
It seems like you are redefining "perfection" to be whatever your personal bar is for adopting a self driving car (which would make your argument a tautology if you weren't also overgeneralizing your personal bar to everyone.)
I would also point out that the bar for personal adoption is not necessarily the one that we should use to determine which self-driving solutions are allowed to operate at what level on public roads. While this is a complicated topic, I don't think "Lewis Hamilton" is the only reasonable place to set those bars.
I am not talking about these people using FSD on and off like it happens now with Tesla. AS it stands that would be a failure, it's just a glorified cruise control
I am talking about fully giving control to the car and preventing humans from interacting, after clear statistical evidence of autopilot being better than the avg. driver. Given that by definition the majority of drivers are avg. then society would be better off summoning Skynet and putting it at the wheel. It's a clear cut reasoning that works in theory.
Better than avg. doesn't mean that accidents won't happen though. Accidents will still happen and as soon as they start to happen the whole thing will be reversed. That's because people don't consider themselves the "avg. driver" and would rather bet on themselves being better than the avg. driver than the computer being better than that .
Even 95 yr old people consider themselves the local Lewis Hamilton.
You raised the example of FSD purchases, I cite you the counterexample of vaccines. Vaccines are much much much better than the immune system against COVID, if it were to be close you'd have much less adoption because skepticism is not linear.
When in doubt , people bet on themselves or the status quo. In this case the status quo is literally betting on themselves so you have a double effect there too
You are shifting your own goalposts here. You were specifically arguing that perfection is the only bar. You have now redefined "perfection" as meaning "above average", but even with that redefinition, your argument as stated still doesn't match reality.
People are already letting cars drive for them. They are doing it even when they are not allowed to take over for the car (i.e. Waymo in AZ). Clearly some people have lower bars so your claim that the above average safety is required for anyone to give up control of the vehicle they are riding in to a computer is false.
Reading between the lines of what you are saying, is seems that what you are actually trying to argue is more along the lines of "achieving (significantly?) above-average safety for self-driving systems is crucial to achieving mass adoption of self-driving technology." That's a much hard to disprove statement (and one I suspect it is at least partly true given varying levels of "cruciality").
Not wanting to crash into random things when rolling at 120 km/h is not "risk aversion". It's just common sense.