No one yet has mentioned the socio-economic impact of 3 million unemployed over the road truckers being dumped onto the society if and when AV's transform that industry! Add to that taxi and limousine drivers, local delivery drivers. THAT is the reason why fully autonomous vehicles are the "wrong turn" for civilization. Human programmers will NOT program AV's to hit cyclists! The poster that pointed that out is about the only person with their head on straight this morning.
The lane monitoring, collision detection and automatic braking systems in a lot of production cars should be all the automation allowed in motor vehicles until true Artificial Intelligence is achieved. The ideal platform for a driver is a vehicle that will make sure s/he is awake and alert (online), maintaining their position in their lane (online), not about to hit something (online) and, if in an out of control situation not overcorrecting or overbraking (online). At present these systems are not penetrating down to entry level car models which are the majority of cars sold. That should change. True AI is decades away, if ever. We should hope for, if ever. Guaranteed, it is more likely that the human programmers of AI will attempt to use it to control or kill humans that their governments don't like. This is far more likely than that cyclists will be in any way targeted. AV's will make for more predictable roads and it MAY make them safer to cycle on but it MAY be that in order for that to happen that the roads will need to be cleared of vehicles that cannot be controlled via AI. Be careful what you wish for.
AV's are being developed to replace human drivers. This is for economic NOT social reasons. We could do a lot by making existing drivers safer but they would still need to be paid if they are driving for a living. So AV's are being rushed to market in a very primitive state because some people can't wait for them to reach a proper level of development before being turned loose on civilization.