This is just a sensationalist snippet from the long read from the New Yorker that was on hacker news yesterday. The engineer responsible was fired from Google for forming his own company and eventually went to Uber which was the cause of the massive lawsuit between the two, he's now close to unemployable. Since that incident 4 years ago it's pretty clear a lot has changed -but one thing that hasn't changed is Google's constant misrepresentation of their safety record.
It has been reported that it was a constant struggle to get Urmson (the lead in Project Chauffeur) and Levandowski (who wanted to just launch) to work together because they had such a contradictory approach on safety. Urmson left in 2016, shortly before Chauffeur spawned into Waymo.
