> Society accepts that humans make mistakes and considers it unavoidable, but there exists a much higher bar expected of computers/automation/etc.

There are a horde of bicyclists and pedestrians who disagree with you and are hoping that automated cars take over because humans are so terrible.

There are a horde of insurance companies who disagree with you and are waiting to throw money to prove their point.

When automated driving gets objectively better than humans, there will be a bunch of groups who actively benefit and will help push it forward.

> there exists a much higher bar expected of computers/automation/etc. even if a waymo is objectively safer in terms of incidents per miles driven, one fatality makes headlines and adds scrutiny about “was it avoidable?”

This doesn’t seem to be happening. One, there are shockingly few fatalities. Two, we’ve sort of accepted the tradeoff.

Society only cares about the individual and no one else. If Uber/Lyft continue to enshittify with drivers driving garbage broken down cars, drivers with no standards (ie. having just smoked weed) and ever rising rates, eventually people will prefer the Waymos.