It is also necessary to project this into the future, i.e. looking at the integral of expected lives lost 'rushing' self driving cars vs. 'waiting-and-seeing' (as Americans die at a rate of 40,000 per annum).

If twice as many people die for a fixed number of years to create a self driving system that results in half the fatality rate of the status quo, that becomes worth it very, very quickly.

For example: it's not morally equivalent to die while drunk driving at 150 km/h vs dying as a pedestrian because someone ran over you.

I would prefer 10 drunk drivers die instead of just one innocent person.