(2) I really don't understand why people are surprised that Waymo has fallbacks? The fact that they had a team ready to take over as necessary was well known. I've seen a bunch of comments about this and it seems like people are confused.

I think they're surprised to learn it's being done by a bunch of people on the other side of the world because they don't want to pay American wages.

I think you sort of fundamentally misunderstand the whole "steak vs sizzle" thing in capitalism?

The technology "feels" way less cool knowing that there are human backups, which would absolutely in turn make its percieved value go down.