Cycling in Amsterdam often involves eye contact between cyclists and drivers at busy junctions that don't have lights. I don't think self driving cars would be very good with that subtlety.
The main safety feature for cyclists in Amsterdam, is that almost every driver is also a cyclist. They know what cyclists are going to do and how much room they need.
I would be positively terrified cycling anywhere near self-driving cars in anything other than ideal weather conditions on recently renovated simple streets with simple streetscape and recently painted lines. Drivers may be poor, but they are poor in predictable, known ways. Self-driving cars will be sudden, unpredictable and disastrous poor drivers in edge cases for a very long time.
Sadly what is currently available as FSD requires a driver to be more attentative than if it was off (the car will bail on FSD and you have maybe 1 second to respond) . You would be safer on the road if FSD was off.
Self-driving cars are still a long time away from being widely available, but urban infrastructure changes can start to be deployed today: bollards, segregated bike lanes, at grade pedestrian crossings, pedestrianized streets, divergers, roundabouts, etc.
With mitigation infrastructure you either make it impossible for the bad thing to happen, or you greatly reduce their impact. Infrastructure doesn't have to rely on humans not screwing up, if anything it expects it.
IMO close calls need to become a ticketable offense.
The "no harm no foul" mentality encourages people to push the boundaries when they themselves do not bear the true costs (of being hit, vs monetary ... health loss > wealth loss)
Yep. A driver pulled suddenly in front of me into the bike lane I was in, to pass cars to make his right turn, saving him maybe 30 seconds. He didn’t check for me, hit his brakes to make the turn, and I had to split lanes left to avoid impact. Luckily I was familiar with this stretch of road and paying extremely close attention, and the other cars were driving safely, else I would have had a very bad day.
I confronted him and his response was “Well we didn’t collide, what more could you ask for?”
Even in probably a top 5 city for cycling in America (SF), I weigh how poor the drivers will be along the route when choosing to drive or cycle.
In a city like San Diego, where drunk driving is a local pastime, I would never cycle.