Why is anyone even bothered by this??

Waymo is level 4 self drive. Level 4 is required to autonomously handle all situations it might encounter (they are geofenced, so outside the geofence is not something it's expected to encounter) safely. That does not preclude stopping and calling for help, it just requires that it be able to safely stop itself.

Why do I feel like this whole bit is being stirred up by Tesla to distract from the fact that they aren't making it at level 4?

Because this was a fishing expedition. Do you let the police have a warrant to examine everyone in a large group?

The slope isn't slippery, it's vertical. It's always misused. Thus it needs to be completely prohibited, lest the camel get it's nose in.

Which isn't really relevant as most violent crime is criminal on criminal. Know each other doesn't mean they're friends. Many times it's rivals.

Perfect illustration. It's not a women thing, it's a people thing.

Note that "insecure" is not incompatible with "nice" and "timid". Doesn't make them unlikable.

And it's not that women like assholes. Rather, people (not just women) like the traits that let an asshole get away with being an asshole.

Both the "nice guy" and the "asshole" are insecure. The latter is just better at masking their insecurities in such a way that others mistake it for confidence.

This is especially true when eveyone involved is young enough not to have a wide enough frame of reference to gauge what's an indication of actual confidence versus abuse and has a brain undergoing massive hormonal shifts that intensify emotions, encourage risk taking and make them seek out novelty. Let's remember that most of the "nice guy" stories people like to tell are about early adulthood or more often than not their late teens.

The tell-tale phrase of a soon-to-be victim in a relationship with an abuser is "he's not like that when we're alone", not "I can fix him".

There's a difference between confidence and dominance. It's difficult to grasp given how much our culture tends to conflate them as desirable traits in men but the main distinction is that one is about resilience and the other is about abuse.

Confidence is attractive. Unless you're deeply insecure (and abusers often are insecure even if they try to mask it in displays of dominance) you're likely attracted to confidence in potential partners - yes, even as a straight guy. Just like an insecure person can use dominance to mask their insecurity, a confident person can also act submissively. This isn't just true in BDSM, it's actually a social dynamic many people engage in completely naturally.

An abuser (or I guess the pop-psych term is usually "narcissist" but let's not open the can of worms on whether that is ever applied "correctly") will often seek out a confident partner they can manipulate into a position of vulnerability they can take advantage of to control them.

The problem with power is that it is nearly inseparable from abuse. Abuse will inevitable arise from any power imbalance because the mere circumstance of being in a position of power can easily lead to absuses of power unless you're extremely diligent about your use of it. A healthy social dynamic always requires a balance of power - even if there may be a local imbalance in any one-on-one dynamic it can be offset by the wider network if it is stable and strong enough. If you look at powerful men in modern society almost none of them are actually confident. The few who are tend to paradoxically stand out for their humility and deference (i.e. taking credit for their losses and sharing credit for their accomplishments). But this is of course much more difficult than starting out from a position of power and fearfully lashing out at any potential rival.

It's not the urinating part. It's the part where you expose the bit that does the urinating. And most places are bonkers about that.

There often is a realm where they should have known but didn't want to admit it to themselves.

No one wants to admit that their child was raped, even if they are open to the possibility — so your assertion reduces down to "there often is a realm where they should have known".

Because the article doesn't give detail, we don't know. The mother could have forcefully spurned explicit disclosures from her daughter. She could even have participated in the abuse.

But there's also a possibility that since the perp was clever enough to hide identifying details while publishing CSAM online that he was clever enough to hide abuse from those close by.

I would condemn participation but forgive ignorance. Other commenters here will never forgive the mother no matter what.

I think you only see the high level offenders in the stuff you can search.

And you say it occurred in the middle of the afternoon at a city bus stop. Pretty hard to do anything serious there without a million people calling 911.