Estimation question

What are the estimated number of “incidents” that could be reported by users of Waymo in the SF Bay Area?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Estimation combined with product judgment, since this question needs a defined scope for 'incidents' before counting.

Define 'incidents' clearly: minor issues like hard braking or unexpected stops reported by riders, not just crashes.
Estimate Waymo's SF Bay Area ride volume, assuming roughly a few thousand rides per day given its current robotaxi scale.
Assume an incident report rate per ride, such as roughly 1 in 500 to 1,000 rides prompting a rider-reported incident.
Multiply daily rides by the assumed report rate to get a daily incident count.
Multiply by 365 for an annual estimate, adjusting slightly for service growth over the year.
State the result as an order of magnitude, likely in the low thousands annually, with assumptions clearly flagged.

Defines 'incidents' explicitly as minor reported issues rather than only serious crashes, since scope changes the answer completely.
Anchors on a specific, plausible daily ride volume for Waymo's current Bay Area scale rather than an arbitrary guess.
States a clear incident rate assumption, roughly 1 in 500 to 1,000 rides, marked openly as an estimate.
Lands on an order of magnitude, low thousands per year, with visible reasoning rather than a single unexplained number.

Skipping the scope definition and jumping straight into a number for an undefined term.
Confusing Waymo's small robotaxi fleet scale with a much larger rideshare service like Uber.

How would this estimate change if you included near-miss incidents detected by the vehicle itself, not just rider reports?
How would you validate this estimate with real safety report data?