As far as it goes ... I would ride on the road with a driverless car ... a driverless car couldn't possibly do anything more stupid than I have seen drivers do. To a cyclist, who or what is driving is irrelevant. The cyclist has to realize what a car can and cannot do (rates of acceleration) and position him/herself accordingly.
As for driverless cars not killing anyone ... as far as I can tell, AVs tend to be over-cautious, not excessively reckless. So, human driver error--mostly drivers of other cars--- seems to have been and to be the most likely cause of AV collisions.
As many have noted .. . AVs are not ready for prime time. They are barely ready for the very limited test driving they have been doing. But I don't see anyone here claiming they are ready for general use. This is a nascent technology. Many of the arguments here are like complaining because a baby just learning to crawl is not winning Olympic sprints.
It is funny ... the people who oppose AVs seem to think their position is more rational ...but we arer all arguing about imagination. The tech is new. The argument that something in its earliest stages of development is not yet a finished product is absurd.
Predictions as to whether it will ever work, or will ever be profitable, or when .... all of that is imaginary. None of us are "Right." We have no idea what other technologies are being developed which might suddenly give AVs a boost ... or supplant any need for them. I am sure Alexander Graham Bell didn't think everyone would be having video-conferences with people around the world on their phones. No way he could have predicted wireless tech, computer tech, any of that. So everyone making predictions here, either pro or con, ... we are all just imagining.
However ... looking at t the examples offered up by history--Alexander Graham Bell, for instance?---it is easy to see that numerous technologies could reach a development point at some point to send a technology light-years ahead of what it was in its infancy.
I don't see AVs really Working until every one is in constant, real-time communication with every other---something I don't think is possible right now, at least not with available and affordable commercial equipment. I Imagine that such technology Will exist ... based on the huge technological leaps we have seen in the past. Whether, when that tech is online, there is still a need or desire for AVs ... I cannot predict.
People in the year 1805 were astounded by steam boats. Pretty sure cars and even more so airplanes were not widely imagined. By 1965 space flight was a widely accepted occurrence. In 1875, there were no phones. By 1975, rich people could have satellite phones---something impossible without space flight.
Nowadays, we all have computers in our pockets---as well as video cameras, data recorders, music boxes, still cameras, and electronic gaming devices, and we are linked all around the world. That stuff wasn't even science fiction 200 years ago. So, when people tell me that there are insurmountable issues with AVs ... i think those people are either unimaginative, ill-informed about human history, or heavily biased. But those are just my opinions.
None of us will know if AVs can work in the real world until the do or do not. None of us can know if they will be commercially feasible until they are or are not. Basically we are just arguing which science fiction story is real ... when none of them are.
But ... this is a large part of what humans do. Who needs situation comedies? Just watch the news.