We don’t tolerate machine incidents because who is liable if an accident occurs? A company with a $4.6 trillion market cap? They’re not a legal opponent any of us really want to take on.

Lawyers are salivating at the possibility of suing Waymo if they ever make a mistake. Much better to be hit by a Waymo (or a Tesla Robotaxi) than the typical uninsured, "judgement proof", human driver.

Exactly, imagine the huge sums of liability insurance Google is carrying to make payouts when the worst-case scenario happens. That financial burden is a prime driver of their operational safety record.

Any stats to back up that the _typical_ driver is uninsured?

An exaggeration on my part. About 16% of all drivers are uninsured (https://insurance-research.org/node/130), but "accident probability of uninsured drivers is 34 percentage points higher" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19439962.2018.1...).