One big difference in favor of the software is your "after you've confirmed there is no one in the left/right adjacent lane or close enough behind you." The car has been looking in every direction the whole ride. The car already knows what there is to know about all the neighbours. A huge advantage over the human driver.
I feel also that the car having a far better experience of its kinematics / dynamics / features is also a huge advantage - see the good old drifting parallel parking videos.
After that there is the concern about computing reaction time. Can it get stuck hesitating? Clearly the cars hesitate a lot in generally safe places. But we have seen some videos already of a Waymo very smoothly dodging someone running out from in between cars (they were already tracked), and someone mentioned a scooter incident. Hopefully we'll see more videos of emergency responses.
Another comment mentions "r/waymo or r/selfdrivingcars for lots of videos of Waymos avoiding objects."
I feel also that the car having a far better experience of its kinematics / dynamics / features is also a huge advantage - see the good old drifting parallel parking videos.
After that there is the concern about computing reaction time. Can it get stuck hesitating? Clearly the cars hesitate a lot in generally safe places. But we have seen some videos already of a Waymo very smoothly dodging someone running out from in between cars (they were already tracked), and someone mentioned a scooter incident. Hopefully we'll see more videos of emergency responses.
Another comment mentions "r/waymo or r/selfdrivingcars for lots of videos of Waymos avoiding objects."