> an "oops" in a car is not immediately life threatening either
They definitely can be. One of the viral videos of a Tesla "oops" in just the last few months showed it going from "fine" to "upside-down in a field" in about 5 seconds.
And I had trouble finding that because of all the other news stories about Teslas crashing.
While I trust Waymo more than Tesla, the problem space is one with rapid fatalities.
that's much simpler than three dimensional coordination.
an "oops" in a car is not immediately life threatening either