Since we're speaking in generalities here, I can tell you that generally things like crash cost, time delay like when we just had two semi trailers crash and shut down an entire critical interstate, etc. aren't taken into account.

If you wanted to include some of those factors, including travel time and travel time cost, etc. you'd be even more disappointed in the performance of your state and local governments with respect to transportation both in how we move people and money.

And that's just direct costs, we can also start looking at other societal costs, whether that's pollution due to exhaust fumes, the destruction of small businesses, obesity, etc.

Going back to the article though for a second, the CEO of Waymo (or whoever it was) was exactly correct. Society will tolerate these deaths. We tolerate them and their costs en masse today. It's just a matter for Waymo and whoever to figure out liability for crashes and make sure that it doesn't fall on them and that society instead bears that cost like we do for highway crashes and death, etc.