I think most rational people would come to realize that even if the 1/10 of deaths are caused by computer errors then at least the problem can be fixed over time. With human error, there's not much you can do.
This is just it. Most people aren't rational, and they don't think statistics apply when they are causally involved. How many people have you met who think that "don't drink and drive" doesn't apply to them because they "can hold their liquor" or "have had enough practice driving drunk"?
The match up isn't even when you have "random thing happens and you die" on one side and "dangerous situation happens where your personal ability plays a small role" on the other. The only way I can see to spin it is to convince people that they don't want to be on the road with other human drivers.
> if the 1/10 of deaths are caused by computer errors then at least the problem can be fixed over time.
This only follows through if you don't introduce new technology and innovations to your software (and thus new bugs), which isn't going to happen.
If you look at air travel, the number of fatal accidents occurring each decade since the 1950s has stayed around the same, even though we've significantly improved automated systems and reduced the potential for pilot error.
The number of accidents has perhaps stayed roughly the same but there's a hell of a lot more planes flying every day now. So it's highly likely that the accident rate per flight has dropped dramatically. (Though I don't have the data handy to support either hypothesis).
