Being transparent about such incidents is also what stops them from potentially becoming a business/industry-killing failures. They're doing the right thing here, but they also surely realize how much worse it would be if they tried to deny or downplay it.

> they also surely realize how much worse it would be if they tried to deny or downplay it.

Indeed. Waymo is a much more thoughtful and responsible company than Cruise, Uber, or Tesla.

"Cruise admits to criminal cover-up of pedestrian dragging in SF, will pay $500K penalty" https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/cruise-fine-criminal-cov...

They handled an unpredictable emergency situation better than any human driver.

Was it unpredictable? They drove past a blind corner (parked SUV) in a school zone. I'm constantly slowing down in these situations as I expect someone might run out at any second. Waymo seemed to default to the view that if it can't see anyone then nobody is there.