I think uber expect that things will have moved on by 2019. Whilst this might sound extremely optimistic, it would not surprise me to see true level 5 cars appearing sooner than you might think.
When it comes to accidents, it is inevitable that autonomous cars are bound to make mistakes, and those mistakes could inevitably lead to fatalities. However, there are bound to be upsides, and I think back to my recent near-death experience... I met a car doing 60mph on the wrong side of the road, just over the brow of a hill, overtaking a lorry on double white lines. Would an autonomous vehicle have made the errors this driver did? I think probably not.
The question is, how many deaths will the public accept? One fatality per 100 million miles? Or will the idea that lives are placed in the hands of a machine be unacceptable?