>If Waymo literally didn't foresee a blackout, that's a systemic problem.

I agree with this bit

> If, on the other hand, there was some weird power and cellular meltdown that coïncided with something else, that's a fixable edge case.

This is what I have a problem with. That’s not an edge case. There will always be a weird thing no one programmed for.

Remember a few years ago when a semi truck overturned somewhere and poured slimy eels all over the highway? No one‘s ever gonna program for that.

It doesn’t matter. There has to be an absolute minimum fail safe that can always work if the car is capable of moving safely. The fact that a human driver couldn’t be reached to press a button to say to execute that is not acceptable. Not having the human available is a totally foreseeable problem. It’s Google. They know networks fail.

This isn't to disagree with your overall point about proper emergency mitigation and having humans available.

> Remember a few years ago when a semi truck overturned somewhere and poured slimy eels all over the highway? No one‘s ever gonna program for that.

While the cause is unusual, this is really just three things that everyone absolutely should be programming into their autonomous vehicles: accidents, road debris, and slick conditions.