It seems to me if you wanted to deliver on "economic benefits", save lives, reduce emissions, etc there is an obvious already existing option: subways/LRT. For inter-city travel build high speed rail. I just don't see driverless cars as the panacea that other people do, even if it worked— which it doesn't seem to.
Nothing has ever been a panacea, and people very rarely claim things will be. Cars will be around for a long time. Building public transportation is not trivial and not practical everywhere. People often drive even in parts of the world with good public transportation. Replacing human drivers with (working) computers would be a major improvement.
