No flop, just a very conservative roll-out, which is what Uber should have been doing (and Tesla). Waymo (I think then still the 'Chauffeur' program as part of Google) had their first accident (a 2 mph non-injury fender-bender) after seven years of public driving; by comparison, Tesla experienced their first
fatal A/P accident just 7 months after releasing it, because they were pushing the tech way beyond what it was ready for. I don't doubt that Waymo is being even more conservative with this roll-out than they otherwise would have been, given the negative public perceptions from the Uber fatality there, even assuming that AZ isn't
requiring a safety driver for now.
If you want to see some of the differences between the various companies attitudes/approaches, I suggest you read "Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—And How It Will Reshape Our World" by Larry Burns, who has been involved in this stuff from back when he was VP of R&D and Planning for GM, then consulted for Google/Waymo, and knows all the major players.
https://www.amazon.com/Autonomy-Quest-D ... 0062661124
The book's so recent it even mentions the Herzberg (and Huang) crashes, although not in as much detail as the NTSB prelim, and it also dissects the Brown crash and why Google/Waymo ultimately decided not to go down the 'driver assist' route on the way to full autonomy.
BTW, that guy at Hyper Change needs to cut back on the caffeine!