"Hey guys what are you complaining about? We didn't (directly) kill anyone!"
I was curious if Waymo has even been involved with a crash that killed someone, so I looked it up. The answer is yes - there was a Tesla going 98mph in SoMa whose driver died after hitting a Waymo. Clearly we should shut down Waymo until they can handle that situation!
Even if every US city had Waymos blocking the street for every single disaster, as they did here. I find it extremely unlikely that even the indirect deaths would come close to that number. And that's assuming Waymo learn from this lesson. Which they will.
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-estimates-39345-t... [2] https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents...
Eh, I don't know. ~40 people die from traffic collisions each year in San Francisco, so about one every nine days. People would be driving more cautiously without traffic signals or street lights, and most collisions at intersections would occur a relatively low speed assuming drivers treat the dead signal as a stop sign. The risk of death for drivers might be higher during a power outage like that, but I doubt it would be 9x (and the outage lasted less a full day).