This definitely feels like a very hopeful and intentionally narrow sited analysis. Like, we're saying that Waymo's accidents were primarily low-speed collisions but also they were only allowed to go 35mph max and drive in off peak hours when accidents are far less likely to begin with. If we're doing a comparative analysis then we'd need to compare to humans driving unimpaired during off hours at 35mph at most. And, it's also definitely worth considering how predictable and consistent the failures are; a human might miss someone backing out and hit them once because they are distracted. A computer missing the same means that there's a set of conditions that will trigger failure every single time they occur. So, if those conditions are repeated heavily in any place then the likelihood of catastrophic failure increases substantially.
For sure there is some cherry picking going on. And for sure it depends. And for sure we're missing the big numbers to do a meaningful statistic analysis at this point.
What I think is most interesting about your way of looking at this is whether we'll find those sub-domains where autonomous driving makes sense versus where manual driving will remain safer. And what those domains will be.
I still wonder if we end up in a place--perhaps for a significant period--where you end up with AVs on a subset of roads perhaps in a subset of conditions. I don't live in a city so I have different use cases than those who do live in a city may have, but being able to be driven on the highway in most conditions seems like a much easier task than the general case, applies to conditions where an accident can be serious, and would actually be really useful for a lot of people.
Also you can do the same thing horizontally, with more passengers and over greater distances. GoA 3 services from the 1980s and then GoA 4 services a bit later
[Grade of Automation 3 services don't need a human "driver" but they're not safe enough that we can just leave them to be used unattended like an elevator, there's a trained member of staff somewhere, probably helping tourists or checking tickets or something - the GoA 4 services are unattended, like an elevator there are humans but they're far away in a control center and you're safe enough while you wait for a human to come to where you are and fix whatever extraordinary problem the automation couldn't handle e.g. there's no electricity so you can't go anywhere.]
