Geoffrey, I think the quote from Christopher Hart, (former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board) is an extremely bad analogy. Aviation piloting is actually very safe, but average-Joe-driving is not. Average Joe gets drunk and nonetheless drives on Friday nights, he gets angry and insults other drivers while making a turn, he does not respect the road regulations… the list goes on and on.

Pilots have a completely different culture: they double-check things, even when everything looks right (this was commented to me by an actual pilot) and take discipline and protocols at heart. Drivers, on the other hand, seem to think that once they drive fluently, the car drives bi itself (no pun intended) so no attention is required whatsoever while driving, and then we can do other things like texting in order to make use of time.

Given that self-driving cars are intended for replacing the human driver described above, the safety required from self-driving cars is not very high.