If the safety delta was low after removing them, as 'tis with Lidar, absolutely.

It's also possible their LIDAR implementation was poor. Waymo uses LIDAR and has fewer incidents per mile.

Waymo has HD maps that require regular 'trawling', just like Google Street view. They are also very conservative in turns, generally avoiding unprotected lefts. They also are much less human-like.

Good point. I'm pretty sure it was poorer, Waymo really goes all-in on Lidar, they still top-mount it don't they? Waymo is also solving a much more constrained problem, with far fewer vehicles, so fewer accidents doesn't surprise me.

They are doing exactly what Tesla isn't willing to do and are being responsible in exactly the way Tesla isn't.

But it's an expensive dead-end for most purposes, esp re the insane mapping. Ok for city robo-taxis. Doesn't solve the real problem to be solved.

Cars drive in cities, last I checked.

I guess you're saying that "cities are mapped, dude." But not mapped in anything like the way Waymo maps for this purpose: if I heard right, yesterday, mapped to the centimeter and very frequently updated to deal with any changes of any kind!

Driving in cities is a real problem that will really need to be solved.