> Waymo had no choice but to solve the expensive problem of "Always Available and Safe"

And it's still not clear whether they are using a fallback driving stack for a situation where one of non-essential (i.e. non-camera (1)) sensors is degraded. I haven't seen Waymo clearly stating capabilities of their self-driving stack in this regard. On the other hand, there are such things as washer fluid and high dynamic range cameras.

(1) You can't drive in a city if you can't see the light emitted by traffic lights, which neither lidar nor radar can do.

LIDAR is notoriously easy to blind, what are you on about? Bonus meme: LIDAR blinds you(r iPhone camera)!