Driverless cars could make our roads safer and reduce congestion. But the algorithms driving them will also have to make life-or-death decisions.

I'm all for high standards for self-driving cars. Policy makers and developers should think carefully about what self-driving cars should do in no-win situations; but high safety standards in general are the most important thing so self-driving cars don't get into those situations as much in the first place.

Self-driving cars done right can be so much safer than human drivers; but I fear cut rate cars. Uber is a nasty example of that. They put money over safety, made all the wrong decisions and killed someone because of it. That fatality wasn't the car choosing one life over another. It was a series of bad decisions - like disabling the emergency brakes when in autonomous mode - that led to an unnecessary and completely preventable death.

Done the right way, like the way Waymo is doing it, self-driving cars will get in fewer bad situations, and will be able to handle the bad situations they do get into better than human drivers. "A self-driving car could kill you or your passengers to save pedestrians." sounds scary, but you and your passengers will be more likely to die in a human driven vehicle than in a high quality self driving car, even if the car prioritizes the lives of people outside the car over those inside the car every time it has to choose.

I have been skeptical of autonomous driving from day one not because I think it is impossible to do it right (even though it's a hard task it seems, involving not only technological decisions buth philosophical ones), but because they don't add much over public transport. A decent public transport network is cheaper, more envrionmentally-friendly (less cars need to be produced, and less cars use the roads), and safer given it's operated by experts (or by software, why not?) that is better controlled by a centralised authority (i.e. the city council and some other structures) and that has less incentives to drive agressively. That would also help free up lots of space for low-tech transport (i.e. bikes, scooters, skateboards, skates &c) which is often a better option for urban transport in denser cities and a healthier one for those who are physically able to use its variations.

I had a rather unique opportunity, living in Istanbul, to compare decent public transport to absence of it in the same city, given the current metro system was built during the last decade with the effect of a construction boom (politics aside, the construction of a large urban rail system has been hugely beneficial; I can't deny that). It has its own problems (like its sort of "congestion" during the rush hour or some events, but that does not slow individual passengers down except waiting 5min for the next train in extreme situations, and does not cause more energy to be used), but I believe it's a compromise way better than just retaining the number of cars on the roads, and potentially causing a rapid increase in their numbers given with autonomous personal vehicles, way more people will be able to "drive", and licences will become easier to obtain, if will remain required.

We can not reduce congestion, it's a side effect of the number of vehicles on the road. But we can reduce the amount of the latter, which is not only better for the city, but also the general environment given reduced emissions and reduced production.