[miki123211]

The sad truth about Waymo is that they have to aim for a 0 (or extremely close to 0) accident rate for PR/regulatory reasons, especially so for accidents caused by Waymo, and that's always going to heavily influence the way they drive.

Uber drivers cause accidents sometimes, just like all drivers do. Whenever this happens, we generally blame the driver and not Uber. It's a completely unremarkable event that the media will not pick up on, because everybody knows that car accidents are just a fact of life.

If a Waymo causes just one fatal accident, people will be up in arms and demand a ban on self driving. That means they have to be extremely conservative in how they drive, especially as more and more of them appear and the probability of one causing an accident goes up due to simple statistics.

[jltsiren]

There is a simpler explanation: every Waymo vehicle is effectively the same. If one makes a mistake, every vehicle will likely keep making the same mistake over and over again, until it's fixed. If the mistake causes harm, there is often a clear causal link from a flaw in the system to the harm, which can be a pretty good incentive to fix it.

Human drivers are all different. They also learn from their mistakes and change unpredictably over time. Humans can get away with all kinds of unsafe behavior, because bad outcomes are unlikely in any particular situation. If something bad happens, it could easily be a one-off issue. And even with systemic issues, it's easier to change the environment / regulations / vehicles than the drivers.