The only way this has an impact on road accident/injury/fatality rates at any meaningful scale is if millions of people switch from routine personal-car based transportation to shared transportation, even single-occupancy shared transportation like Waymo.
I don't see millions running out and buying a real self-driving car kitted with a spinning lidar "hat" and visible radar transmitters sticking out everywhere, even if doing so meant safer roads for everyone.
What people in the market actually want is what Tesla has been selling (however fraudulently): a car that looks/performs very nice and claims full-self-driving capability, not a goofy looking car that self-drives very well in particular locations and use cases. Cars are about personal identity and power at least as much as they are about functional transportation.
I'd like to be wrong about all that, and would like a future where swarms of electric self-driving buses that route-optimize based on demand pick up people very close to where they are. But I also realize that the reptilian brains of consumers tend to decide how these things eventually pan out, and not the solutions that are optimized for efficiency and safety.
I don't see millions running out and buying a real self-driving car kitted with a spinning lidar "hat" and visible radar transmitters sticking out everywhere, even if doing so meant safer roads for everyone.
What people in the market actually want is what Tesla has been selling (however fraudulently): a car that looks/performs very nice and claims full-self-driving capability, not a goofy looking car that self-drives very well in particular locations and use cases. Cars are about personal identity and power at least as much as they are about functional transportation.
I'd like to be wrong about all that, and would like a future where swarms of electric self-driving buses that route-optimize based on demand pick up people very close to where they are. But I also realize that the reptilian brains of consumers tend to decide how these things eventually pan out, and not the solutions that are optimized for efficiency and safety.