I live in the middle of a city, so, no, in terrible weather just like great weather I walk to the store, no need to "starve to death" even if conditions are too treacherous for people to sensibly drive cars. Because I'm an old man, and I used to live somewhere far from a city, I have had situations where you can't use a car to go fetch groceries because even if you don't care about safety the car can't go up an icy hill, it loses traction, gravity takes over, you slide back down (and maybe wreck the car).
Because as an old man who has actually lived in all these places - and also has ridden in Waymos before and has had friends on the Waymo team in the past, your comments seem pretty ridiculous.
A lot of the large population centres in the US are in these what you're calling "super cushy" zones where there's not much snow let alone ice. More launches in cities in Florida, Texas, California will address millions more people but won't mean more ice AFAIK. So I guess for you the most interesting announcement is probably New York, since New York certainly does have real snow. 2026 isn't that long, although I can imagine that maybe a President who thinks he's entitled to choose the Mayor of New York could mess that up.
As to the "But people in some places are crazy drivers" I saw that objection from San Francisco before it was announced. "Oh they'll never try here, nobody here drives properly. Can you imagine a Waymo trying to move anywhere in the Mission?". So I don't have much time for that.
Both SF and LA climates are super cushy compared to say, Northern Michigan. Or most of the eastern seaboard. Or even Kansas, Wyoming, etc. in the winter.
In those climates, if you don’t drive in what you’re calling ‘nobody should be attempting it’ weather, you - starve to death in your house over the winter. Because many months are just like that.
Self driving has a very similar issue with the vast majority of, say, Asia. Because similarly “this is crazy, no one should be driving in these conditions” is the norm. So if it can’t keep up, it’s useless.
Eastern and far Northern Europe has a lot of kinda similar stuff going on.
Self driving cars are easy if you ignore the real world haha.