> Cruise and Waymo have both done tons of closed course testing, that's where they validate their respective systems against mission critical stuff. But eventually they've got to go out into the real world and learn to deal with real traffic on real roads.
Waymo has been doing that longer than anyone, though.
Technically Waymo has been acting like cowboys longer than anyone. They smartened up and got serious about safety around 2015, but before that they were winging it. It was just a goofy science experiment back then.
The Google self-drivng car project was under the leadership of Sebastien Thrun and Anthony Levandowski, and as hardcore engineering types their thinking was 'We'll save more people than we kill', and it was as simple as that.
Waymo has been doing that longer than anyone, though.