history favors early operations over teething problems
Yes, I would ride a 787 today if it came up as an option--with interest in the novelty, and no greater fear than normal.
While I have neither read nor made a remotely statistical analysis, it seems to me that there has been a pattern of major new aircraft types having quite good early operational safety records despite well-publicized faults for decades now. The 747 and 777, to cite two post-Comet examples, took a long while before first hull loss with fatalities.
My simplistic assessment is that, especially for the bigger aircraft, early operators tend to be major airlines flying into major airports, and that everyone involved is highly aware that a new type brings new risk so are less inclined to cut corners (in every area, from operations, to maintenance, to crew selection, to various pilot choices I won't pretend to articulate) than on average. In the modern time, this "extra cushion" seems to have been more than enough to compensate for the excess safety risk posed by the teething problems, on average. ("modern time" here may be taken to begin after the Comet and Electra fatal teething problems)
For the record, I am much more comfortable with the fire-proof box plus vent portion of the fix for the 787 battery than I would have been had someone triumphantly declared they had found a manufacturing fault "which we will assure will not recur", or even a electrical environmental challenge "which we have engineered out of the system" and then gone on to fly with the demonstrated inadequate containment as before. Perhaps those who decry the lack of a root-cause solution have not really thought through what that would practically have meant on the ground (well, in the air in this case). Just suppose the battery subsequently found a new reason to fail--not in the manner "root-caused". I'll take the box and vent, thank you, and would not mind if you installed them for your big NiCd batteries as well (you do know those can fail violently--right?)
No, I am no completely comfortable--but I'd expect myself far more likely to be killed by hitting wrong after bouncing off the overhead when not strapped down in a sudden CAT episode, or inflight Loss of Control, or CFIT, or over-run, or another high item on the pareto of ways to get killed in a passenger aircraft than by one of Boeing's teething problems on this aircraft.
I could be all wrong, but that is how I see it.