This will take a very long time to happen but it makes sense. I love to drive my vehicle but the amount of danger present in driving is astronomical. If over 30k deaths per year can be avoided by taking away manual driving, I am all for it.

Where does the 30k figure come from? I don't see that in the article. In any case, it hardly sounds "astronomical" - that's only about 1.1% of all US deaths in 2013, according to this CDC data <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf>

30k comes from CDC http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm Maybe it's not astronomical but being able to get rid of 30k deaths per year should be a welcome opportunity.

I don't think you need to be friends with a person in order to do this. You can send normal messages to users who are not friends so I think payment will also have this ability.