Yea, it is an extension. It's additive. The safest car is the one that's parked. Car-centric culture has a lot of negative externalities. But the entire society is geared toward cars and propping them up. Cars themselves, auto jobs, departments of highways, tires, oil, gas, insurance, fast food, COSTCO, you name it. Most of those things can be replaced with something as simple as a sidewalk and better urban planning. If your goal is to prop up an industry, self-driving cars will do that for you.

If your goal is to increase autonomy [1], wealth, entrepreneurship, and happiness and decrease death and health concerns, racism, obesity, and other things you need to move away from car-only building and design patterns. I also think busses are a problem because they just reinforce bad habits. For most municipalities a bus is just a worse version of your car which is why they're largely unsuccessful for the masses. Bike/walk/rail is, in my view, quite literally the only good path forward for future transportation development.

I don't think the US is losing the car race to China though. What race? Why are we even in a race all of a sudden? I drive an EV and like them but aside from emissions I'm not sure one is really all that better than another (I find EVs more convenient though).

[1] Been a bad person lately? Maybe the government and the vehicle facial recognition technology says sorry no driving for you. Now what? Secondarily for the elderly (as the single-issue voter OP has mentioned) walking/biking/rail allows for better outcomes and for folks to participate more in daily life. Driving becomes more and more hazardous as we age and folks wind up stuck at home.