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Yes, because as it turns out, defensive driving works, the average American motorist is just bad at it. Fully agreeing with your point, just piling on because I

• rented_mule 11mo ago
  Self-driving cars also require us human drivers to learn new defensive-driving skills. A month or two back, I was driving down a steep one-way, three-lane street in SF, late on a rainy night. I saw a Waymo stopped at the left curb and I moved to the from the left lane to the center lane in case it started to pull out into the left lane. There were no cars in front of it or behind it, so I was shocked to see it quickly leave the curb at about a 45 degree angle, as if it were pulling out of a tight spot with a car parked just in front of it, but much faster. If I saw a human driver doing that, it would almost certainly mean they are trying to get all the way across the street immediately. If it was doing that, there is no way I could stop in time on the wet downhill. I tried, but that just made steering difficult as my anti-lock brakes struggled to find any traction at all. Then, just as quickly, it straightened out in the left lane. I'm glad I was the only other car around. One element of defensive driving is thinking about how to avoid surprising other drivers. When will self-driving cars' defensive driving rise to that level? Waymo certainly wasn't there in that situation on that night.