That's a strawman. You can make private automobile ownership much safer and more convenient by building transit. What you're implying is that "forcing everyone to use public transit" is bad, so we need to sacrifice a couple thousand people for self-driving cars? My argument is that we can put much more stringent safety requirements on automobile users. If self driving cars can meet those requirements, then be my guest. Why are you willing to bend over backwards, to the point of endangering others, just to avoid public transit or other proven safe technologies?
Riots in the streets? That happened in France when the government increased the price of diesel. Imagine what would have happened if the government had tried to ban cars entirely!
If a state government or the US Federal government tried to ban cars, they would be out of power very quickly, even in the most liberal parts of the country.
Yes and I'm pretty sure if you let everyone know they're going to be enrolled into a massive experiment to test beta self driving software upon themselves with or without their consent, then they're going to be rioting also.
That's just not realistic, not even in Europe.