The Robotaxi companies claim they already are safer than a human driver. And I believe them. The problem is they keep screwing up in ways that humans typically don’t. They blow through caution tape and hit fire hoses at full speed. In the SF incident, another car hit the pedestrian first which threw her into the path of the Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle then pulled over, which would be the correct decision 99.999% of the time, but not in this case.
If you think about it, the fact cars can drive around without a human driver at all is astounding, but they are still a hazard in certain situations. The public will never accept it until those situations are fixed.