You're right, Waymo and Cruise and Venture Cap are on a moral crusade to prevent driving fatalities, this isn't about high margin robotaxis and delusional hopes of accidentally creating AGI with a CV NN. And I agree with you, what the cruise vehicle did in this case, a human would totally do exactly the same thing. I mean humans are fucking neanderthals, have you ever seen one behind the fucking wheel of a car? They can't go more than 30 seconds without nearly crashing, and they only know how to drive in a 4km^2 zone. I personally know that every time I let my tesla go FSD, I'm only intervening every 90 seconds because of the unreasonably high standards I hold it to. Self driving cars only need to make the right decision like ~80% of the time. That's good enough, it's better than most human drivers.

And by the way, there's a cheaper and more effective way to reduce traffic fatalities, and it uses fewer precious resources, energy and land, emits less carbon dioxide, and stimulates economies but it's some kind of stealthtech from the 1800's. (choo choo)