My brother lives in the neighborhood where this public beta testing is occurring. Folks, let me tell you from first-hand experience- these cars are terrible drivers. They are extremely hesitant, and because of this they cause traffic backups and delays in places where safety is compromised. You better hope you are not behind one when they perform a left-hand turn onto a busy street, because you are probably going to be waiting a while. They stop in seemingly random situations where human drivers would never stop, like a bicyclist standing way off the side of the road (talking to someone) with his bike pointing towards traffic. People have told me they've been in the middle of a turn behind a Waymo car, when all of a sudden the car just randomly stops for no apparent reason, leaving them stranded in the middle of the intersection as the light turns red. The default reaction for a Waymo car under any sort of ambiguity seems to be to just stop (literally) until the ambiguity resolves itself. Unfortunately this causes considerable confusion and traffic backups for human drivers.

I understand why Waymo is proceeding cautiously. But you really get the impression that the technology has a long ways to go. People in Chandler are pissed because this fleet of cars is a huge nuisance and is in fact less safe for human drivers who are sharing the road. I have no doubt that autonomous vehicles will be safer than human drivers someday, but that day is definitely not today.