Self-driving cars won’t be discontinued, no matter the casualties.
The end game is to end automobile ownership and the personal control over the vehicles’ paths and destinations.
When fully implemented, people will only be able to go where they are “allowed.”
And once they become safer than human driven cars, and roads that are “self driven cars only” can be created for much faster and safer trips, the writing will be on the wall.
I love driving. I’ve driven a manual six speed Scion FR-S over 150,000 miles on my daily 150 mile commute on the twisty and smooth back roads of KY and never get tired of it, though I’ve been through seven sets of tires, most of them Michelin PSS’s.
But the age of massive use of human driven cars is clearly in its sunset. Driving a car in most cities, especially on your commute, has become a horrendous endeavor. Self driving would be welcomed by most people. It would also almost certainly be a faster commute.
But it may take at least another couple of generation to completely eliminate the human driven car.