While technically this makes them not at fault, it may represent some evidence of erratic braking behavior. Anecdotally, drivers have reported Waymo cars having a propensity for "brake checking" — not with ill intent of course, but risking accidents anyway.
I went ahead and read the accident reports, just because I was curious.
In one case the AV was stopped at a red light when it was rear ended.
In the second case AV slowed down for a person pushing a shopping cart into the street.
In the third case the AV slowed down for pedestrians in a crosswalk.
All the reports are in the report the person you are responding to posted. I do wish we had video footage of the events, while the first one is pretty clear cut, the other two are really dependent on what "slowing down" looks like, and what the pedestrians were actually doing.
Thanks for the additional context. It appears that in the second case, the AV was in manual mode anyway, so whatever happened cannot possibly be attributed to autonomous driving.
While technically this makes them not at fault, it may represent some evidence of erratic braking behavior. Anecdotally, drivers have reported Waymo cars having a propensity for "brake checking" — not with ill intent of course, but risking accidents anyway.