Sounds more like a great reason to stay away from some of the most chaotic traffic in the US until it can be considered safer. There are far, far more pedestrians in NYC than in Phoenix, and I do not trust a Waymo car to not hit some of them.
I’d take a high quality autonomous vehicle over a tired Uber driver any day as a pedestrian
And this is the problem, self driving cars don't force their way, and they break when anything is vaguely in a collision course. If there is a problem putting them in NYC traffic is that they will stop all the time and create traffic jams, maybe get rear ended by other (human) drivers and fail to get their passengers to the destination because of some minor obstruction.
I routinely drive and walk near these vehicles, they do not seem in danger of hitting anyone.