Waymo is caught between a rock and a hard place. If they hand the car's video to law enforcement without a warrant, lots of people will worry about the privacy

Waymo is caught between a rock and a hard place. If they hand the car's video to law enforcement without a warrant, lots of people will worry about the privacy implications and the precedent it sets. It will also strengthen the resolve of the luddites by allowing them to claim persecution. Right now, the problem is limited to a few wackos. If a multi-billion dollar company ruins the lives of some photogenic families (even if it's legally and morally justified), public sentiment could change. Waymo doesn't want publicity. That could lead to copycats and political polarization. Most people in the US don't even know about these tests, and I'm not sure they'd allow them if they did know. If an interest group (or god forbid, a political party) comes out against self-driving cars, rollout could be delayed by years. That would mean hundreds of thousands of more lives lost due to human drivers. The quieter Waymo can keep this (and the more they avoid looking like a big bad corporation), the sooner we get self-driving cars.