This is another form of collaboration. You could publish your innovations in some technical forum w/o code and it'll automatically drive the industry forward since SOTA results will be available.

Right now, no one really knows the performance of the Waymo system. Millions of miles doesn't mean a lot. I can do billions of miles in a parking lot with no cars or pedestrians. Even millions of miles on road doesn't say anything about the performance of the components.

Indeed it's economically worthy to have a safe market rather than a rushed one that will backfire.

Is there a business model for providing detection data to other fleets in real time? This is a stretch of the word "collaboration" but it could possibly prevent deaths while leaving the IP in the hands of the company.

That's the price we pay for the weakening of patents and the strengthening of trade secrets. Nobody knows how the newer stuff works.