Why -> because if someone caused an accident I'd want to look them in the eyes and call them names; as opposed to calling a support number. If these vehicles were among the best drivers, at least I could live with it maybe. Emotions are real, you cannot always rationalize them away.

Average drivers sometimes end up in jail for their mistakes. If Waymo made those same mistakes, guess what will happen.

I'm not sure it's possible to solve for that with additional prowess.

If you are wronged by a machine you are always going to be emotional about it, i.e having your email account unceremoniously terminated by Google without recourse by an essentially automated process.

The thing to solve for is the lack of recourse. Very very difficult in American society given how skewed the relationship is between corporations and people (or the government for that matter).

If instead when a Waymo demonstratively caused an accident the payout was 10-100x higher than if a human was involved I suspect many peoples qualms would go away.

While I think just the "knowledge" (assuming Americans would accept facts...) that the driver is X% better than the best drivers on the roads would provide little comfort to most.

I think in societies outside of America these may be more successful actually. i.e most parts of Asia.