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The danger would still lie in tire blowouts or other mechanical failures.
Yes, but imagine how much better serviced the cars will be, on average. You won't have to worry about Joe Schmoe in front of you who waited to long to replace his tires or didn't have the check engine light looked at.
Assuming the AI driving the cars can be improved enough, it might be an improvement over a human in the event of a blowout or similar accident, because it won't panic.
I guess you're thinking people won't own their cars then? Maintenance will still be an issue. Those outside the heart of a city and those with families aren't going just start using a glorified taxi service.
My dream utopia is that every neighborhood shares a fleet of self driving cars that form an on-demand service. You have the future-uber app on your phone, say "I want to go dinner", and a car comes and picks you up. I suppose there's nothing preventing someone from having their own self-driving car always available but I feel like it wouldn't be necessary, at least not in cities with more than 100,000 people.
The vast majority of the time our cars are just sitting there. Even if you had an hour commute each way, your car is still parked for almost an entire day. That time would be better spent driving other people around. If the cars are centrally owned, then maintenance would be much more efficient as well.
Rush hour would still exist. There wouldn't be heavy traffic but there would need to be enough cars to handle the "peak" load. Centrally located vehicles could plan optimized carpool routes, for example if a bunch of people from your neighborhood work in the same area you could ride together. I was talking about this with my wife the other day. She works for Michaels Stores at the corporate office, and there's a good chance that someone could live in our neighborhood who also works there and she doesn't even know.
I fully understand that my dream would be the culmination of many years of technological improvements, societal and cultural acceptance, and legislative changes.