Assuming that what you say is true about closed course testing (and that they truly made an effort to replicate the dynamism of a city), why do they gotta test this snack dab in the middle of cities (where we should rather invest in public transportations anyway) instead of, I don’t know, some trails in the woods, where there would also be a bunch of unknowns?
All this reeks of “gotta go to market ASAP to please the investors / shareholders above the rest of humanity” to me.
Tofu