When fully autonomous cars become the norm every town and city will just grind to a halt.
Pedestrians (and cyclists but don't get me started on cyclists)will know that cars are programmed not to run them over so they can wander out into the road to cross or just walk along it with absolutely no negative effect to themselves just bringing all the vehicles to a halt.
Then add the oft discussed option of does the car kill the passengers or a pedestrian?
A narrow winding mountain road.
A person steps out
To avoid running over the pedestrian the car can only drive over the edge to the XXXm drop.
What does it do kill the pedestrian or the passengers?
These, and countless other paradigms have been the subject of immense research over the last few years. There will always be fatal accidents, however, if the number (or other appropriate metric) of fatal accidents from autonomous cars falls well below that from non-autonomous cars, the moral case for autonomous cars will become very strong.
