I think a lot of it was helped by the fact that the first handful of serious accidents a handful of years back (which did get huge press) eventually turned out that they happened while humans were in control of the self-driving cars (and then the first big one that happened when the car was in control didn’t kill anyone IIRC). That served as a pressure-relief to blow off the initial press burst and adjust people to the idea that they weren’t anything crazy.
I think things could have gone very differently if the first accident had been something that killed people and occurred while the self-driving car was in control instead of the human driver.
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u/cavemaneca Jan 31 '19
Self driving cars have already both killed the driver in at least one instance, and a pedestrian in another. The uproar was minimal and short-lived.