It provides a benefit to the owners of such a company, as the labor costs are reduced. In other respects this is like the same nonsense about how we would live better lives and work less as our jobs were replaced by robots. It turns out that an economic "system" based upon dog-eat-dog principles will not allow such altruistic results to accrue for society.
Like someone said above: "socialize the risks, privatize the profits"
I'm not quite sure how you think this will work. Is Google going to commission hitmen to kill 10s of thousands of people each year to make up for the deaths they prevent? Are they going to prevent those who can't drive now from using their cars? Or play irritating sounds in their cars to replace the stress of driving?
Automation will indeed do some harm to a certain group of people. The question is who should be responsible for bailing those people out (if at all). Is it society (aka, the govt), or the companies reaping the benefits of said automation?
Of course, economically, taxi drivers and others will lose while programmers/shareholders will win. The point is that for the 99% (or whatever) of us that aren't in either category, self driving cars will be a massive improvement to our lives. Especially to the 10s of thousands each year that won't die.
