I've watched this video several times. There is a red car clearly present in the intersection when the Waymo begins forward motion. That car partially occlude

I've watched this video several times. There is a red car clearly present in the intersection when the Waymo begins forward motion. That car partially occludes (and is a potential obstacle) for anything that's off to the left of the camera; it also is simply a dynamic obstacle in the intersection. The Waymo can certainly detect and predict if cross-traffic is going to roll through the intersection. But the Waymo started launching right when the light turned green... even though there's a car in the intersection at that time. I agree this is a bad example due to the camera angle, but there's enough evidence to show that the Waymo failed to correctly predict traffic here. And it executed a safety stop (which could have caused a rear-ender) as a result. Occluders are still really hard for SDCs. Humans can usually handle them well though. Handling occluders properly requires a very strong prediction system.