Your premise is that driverless taxis result in a net quality of life improvement for residents of the areas they operate in. That is very far from proven as yet. There is no real downside for an individual state or city to wait and see how it plays out in places where it is implemented. If it turns out to be a great boon, then constituents will clamor for it to be enabled in their area.
That's fair. I think it comes down to how optimistic you are that these things will save time/money/lives compared to uber/lyft and how soon. My read is that it's unlikely to make much difference any time soon, and it's a toss-up as to whether they make things measurably "better" in some way in their cities in the next 5-10 years. But like I said, once it takes off somewhere at real scale, it will be pretty apparent that it's making things better in some measurable way. And then cities that waited will only be a year or so behind if they want to open the floodgates.
For one thing, the data is Already unambiguous as to its use of accident safer, cleaner, assault safer vis Ride share. Just look at the number of assaults in Ubers today. It's something like 5-10 per day globally.
Have you experienced a Waymo? Everyone that does says “game, set, match.” Far superior experience.
Oh and it's cheaper for the user, not stinky, and quiet. Can get a lot done in a nice quiet AV.
I THOUGHT the left wanted a world of AVs. Now you have that possibility and “pffft”?
One more thing. You think these cities that wait will just snap their fingers and get AV companies to dance? They're prioritizing willing, not stone aged thinking cities. Scheduled out resources and city build out.
"And then cities that waited will only be a year or so behind if they want to open the floodgates."
---
Not true. It takes time to map cities and Waymo/others will be concentrating on those places where the services are welcome. It could be far longer than one year to roll out new service.
Uber is planning to rollout its own autonomous car service in 2026.
I will take a Waymo every time instead of an Uber. It removes the wildcard of the possibility of a bad or, for example, overly-aggressive driver. Waymo is safe, predictable, dependable, and efficient, in addition to being clean and pleasant. As a bonus, much safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.
In the future, autonomous vehicles will be able to link with each other and operate like a train, eliminating most of the gap between vehicles, and the oscillating size of those gaps, that characterize traffic with human drivers who must necessarily constantly react to what other drivers are doing. This will greatly improve the capacity of roadways and speed the average flow of traffic. That will benefit everyone in a variety of ways.
Sorry but calling this a "life-saving technology" as if it's a clear win that needs to be implemented at the earliest possible time is a bit of a stretch. We don't know for certain how mass adoption in dense cities will work out in the broadest sense.
The main benefits of this technology are not to people to but to Google and its shareholders. What pricing plans do they plan to guarantee once they have made it impossible to make a living as a taxi or uber driver? What will they be offering to displaced workers by way of compensation? This is a clear case of the costs being externalized while benefits are privatized. New York City already had to help out taxi drivers who were underwater because the post-Uber value of their medallions had plummeted. The recent mayoral election singled out affordability as a major issue while pointing to public transportation (free buses) as a pathway toward achieving that.
There are also cultural issues to contend with. In a complex ecosystem that includes people, animals, property, and other cars, driverless cars have challenges that you might not predict. Consider this recent NYT piece on the death of a cat: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/us/waymo-san-francisco-kit-kat.html
As one person interviewed puts it "“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
Another issue: surveillance. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation most states don't have (yet) have laws that ensure 4th Amendment protections in the securing of warrants before accessing stored footage from driverless cars (among other vehicles). Let's figure out the surveillance piece before we get ahead of ourselves overselling the benefits of this technology.
Finally, what about politics? Google fights any regulation in the public interest tooth and nail; they've shown that they're ready comply the demands of autocrats. Is this really the right time to replace taxi and ride share drivers with a fleet of vehicles controlled by a tech company that already has too much power?
Democracy matters. Blue cities opted in favor of Lyft/Uber and helped their taxi drivers accordingly; but their "wait and see" seems exactly right to me. Let's see if the benefits outweigh the many costs.
I seriously doubt very much that anyone is going to move from a blue city to a red one because of allegedly cheaper and safer taxis. For the moment your notion of the "progressive approach" smacks of technolibertarianism.
That NYT article on the death of the cat seemed to show exactly the opposite to me! We know what company is to blame for the death of this cat. But there are dozens of other cats that have been killed by human drivers, and there's no evidence that *any* of them have been held accountable, or even identified!
Do you mean that you think the NYT covers cat deaths as a matter of course? They covered this one clearly b/c the experience meant something to people. The idea is that if a human driver ran over a cat in the view of other people, the person would likely do something human to acknowledge what they had done to a living creature in the sight of other humans. Or if they didn't they would be considered an asshole and maybe someone would note the license plate and call the police. The Times would not be involved to document this utterly quotidian fact of life--a case of people having adjusted to and developed norms to contend with the downsides of cars.
That this cat death was in part symbolic of other things to these people tells us something that is as real as gradual improvements to self-driving technology. People are sick of callousness and cruelty and they can see tech companies complicity, gaslighting, hubris, and greed in the way that AI is being foisted on the public and in the cozying up to autocracy in exchange for a nonregulatory environment.
One day in some snowy city a Waymo will not recognize that it has killed a small child and it will shock people to their core. If it's a blue city there will likely be legislation in place to investigate the reasons and/or compensate families in a way deemed appropriate by a civilized society. It will be far from perfect just like it is not perfect now when a human driver is responsible. But it will likely be blue cities that develop the norms such as they are.
As it happens I was just in DC for a conference, the blue city where Tim lives and took multiple Lyfts. Every driver was polite, hard-working, and friendly. They respected my privacy when I needed it and chatted about places to get good Ethiopian food when I needed that. I am not sorry that cities like DC and NY give such people a place to work in and people like me a chance to encounter them. San Francisco, which used to be one of my favorite cities, is not the place that it was 20 years ago. Austin has been ruined by the tech industry inflex--many are leaving for bluer cities as soon as they can. The notion that red cities offer any advantage to inhabitants beyond lower taxes is on its face unproved. Higher taxes and more regulation are not in place to stymie technological progress, but to deliver certain norms and qualities of life that many people value: people in Scandinavia or even Paris are by and large happy with the tradeoffs. In the US people choose where they live for complex reasons but young people in particular love blue cities. Employers know this.
I like reading Tim's Substack but on this issue he is misreading a social choice. Public transit is the most important investment for dense cities as anyone with a fact-based view of the world should recognize; but for some needs or preferences, cars are necessary. Uber/Lyft offers good options for those who need them when they can't hail a cab (in NY they are not always cheaper than a yellow cab and in some instances more expensive). The point is that when (or if) NYC or Boston is ready to invite Waymo to deliver their service, Google will come running.
In the meantime, these companies are not popular and as any New Yorker will tell you, the biggest dangers to pedestrians come from delivery drivers whose unsafe pace is mainly down to algorithmic manipulation.
The NYT also reported thousands of incidents of sexually inappropriate behavior by ride share drivers. Use of this technology is unambiguously a clear win for people who want to ride in a vehicle where they won’t get assaulted.
So? NYT has also reported on pervasive lying and layoffs in the tech industry, traffic snafus due to Waymos, and rampant inequality to the point of destabilizing democracy b/c of upward distribution to a tiny investor class (particularly multi-billionaires in tech and their investor allies). That's just a few of the relevant issues.
To wit, your logic here is a bit faulty.
1. Uber needs better background checks (I think this is actually being done).
3. Dense cities need more investment in safe public transit (often being done).
4. For you personally: Better understanding of the meaning of "unambiguously a clear win" so as to avoid hasty generalizations and strawman arguments ;)
So, I’m not aware of a Waymo sexually assaulting anyone.
It’s not a straw man. If people want an alternative transportation option where they perceive less risk of sexual assault, I believe they should have that option.
They have that option already. It's called a yellow cab, public transportation, or renting or buying a car. It's a total strawman since the number of sexual assaults is small and can easily be mitigated even further with better background checks and best practices (1 and 2) above.
It is a big mistake to limit technological and human progress because Uber and Lyft drivers may lose their jobs (did those ride share drivers pay compensation to taxi drivers whose jobs they took?) or by making the death of a street cat more important than the greatly reduced risk of accidents that Waymo has already documented.
And it is a great mistake to assume that Waymo adoption for NYC is progress, technological or otherwise. A given technology needs to offer the right benefits at the right time under the right conditions. Waymo doesn't for NYC right now but it might in the nearish future. Time will tell.
NYC taxi drivers didn't lose jobs; and many became ride share drivers. But those who owned medallions were bailed out by city taxpayers (some of whom were probably ride share drivers). Some of that was offset by ride share users through a tax.
As to the "greatly reduced risk of accidents" it's not been documented in NYC and it's been questionably documented everywhere else (everyone knows that comparing the number of miles during training on a highway to the situation of driving in NYC is a clear case of an apple and an orange).
Re the cat: read what I wrote which had nothing to do with weighing the cat's life against a human life; it was to do with complex cultural issues that need to be contended with in ways that make sense to as dense a city as NY.
Bottom line: NYC citizens lose NOTHING by waiting. They are not limiting "technological and human progress" which, even in the narrow frame of driverless technology will proceed just fine without them. They are making a social decision that works well for their city; and if they decide they want driverless they will get it...fast.
Sorry if this isn't what Peter Thiel or the Cato Institute will tell you :)
What do you mean? It's pretty straightforward - this is a new service that many people like better than existing ones like Uber and Lyft, and no one has shown any way that it makes things worse for non-users, so there's no real downside for an individual state or city to go ahead and do it.
Hilariously, when I googled "impact of self-driving cars on San Francisco taxis," looking for an economic analysis, here's what AI Overview delivered: "Self-driving taxis in San Francisco have negatively impacted human-driven taxis and the city's transit systems by increasing traffic congestion, interfering with emergency services, and causing unpredictable disruptions. These "robo-taxis" have caused significant delays, blocked emergency vehicles, and sometimes act erratically around pedestrians and other cars, prompting a call from city officials to slow the expansion of their services."
So in your view these blue cities are being so irrational it's not even worth mentioning their specific concerns? Labor and safety issues don't seem like something we should just ignore.
I was trying to keep this post brief. But I've written about both the safety issues (Waymo has an excellent safety record) and the labor issues in previous articles, and I expect to cover them further in the future.
Tim, I've been thinking a lot about policy ideas to ease the AV transition for rideshare drivers. Might be a good guest post/discussion for me to publish on Understanding AI if your'e up for it :)
Labor issues? You should have dictated this comment to a typist, then mailed it in by USPS instead - so that typists, letter carriers and truck drivers may hold onto their jobs.
Yawn. Do technolibertarians have a listicle of supposedly killer counterarguments.
The calculator! The horse and buggy! What Socrates said about writing (though it was actually Plato WRITING about what Socrates allegedly said about writing)!
It's as if the ability to contemplate anything beyond the technology-du-jour has been stunted by a narrow fixation on technology. I know this will hardly matter but root of the word TECHNOLOGY is in TECHNE--which is Greek for an art or skill.
Automated technologies need to serve humans, not the other way around. Typewriters offered popular techniques for producing legible text--as did word processors and later voice recognition. Waymo's parent company is a serial enshittifier that habitually lies about data privacy (I do still use Chrome b/c its convenient.)
I don't know where you live, but inhabiting a dense city involves complex social interactions with people and taxi and gig-drivers are founts of useful knowledge. I'm not against driverless cars for places that want them; they have their benefits and other cities have borne through many of their early harms.
But I can tell you that right now with cities under siege from a lawless autocrat and big tech falling into line in favor of their own interests, I'm not sorry to have taxis and ride share drivers from multiple companies in my city. "AI" is concentrated, surveillant, and under-regulated power rigged to benefit the interests of a tiny elite. Around 20 individuals are now directing the plus-trillion-dollar infrastructure buildout. Time to wake up from technoutopian slumbers.
In Boston, the unions are protesting and fighting back against Waymo. We heard 2nd hand that the Mayor may be supporting this. A bunch of us in AI believe this is a wrong for safety and reputation reasons. We started a petition for "Bostonians Supporting Waymo"
My family, for a paper my son was writing for an internship, studied many of these aspects. One thing we did in the LA area was test simultaneous ride hail, same start-finish, vs Waymo. The comparable ubers were consistently more by 10-15% Moreover, NO TIPS (+15% ADDITIONAL savings) No rating system BS. WAYMOS don't cancel on their way to meet you because they got a better fare (say LAX) Suffice to say it's not even close. Once people start using them, it's over.
Many of these blue cities are just harder to drive in. The roads are often narrower and there’s ice and snow. To what extent does this cause these cities to take a slower approach?
San Francisco has narrow, hilly and famously curvy streets, not to mention frequent fog so I don’t think those issues impact Waymo cars very much. Teslas that don’t have Lidar may have a harder time with fog. Snow and ice may be harder, but with plowed streets and snow tires, I don’t think any physical barriers are as significant as political opposition.
Not trading my tractor in for a waymo lol. When you got a vehicle that I can tell to go plough a field around, change out to the disk harrow, adjust the blades, and go over it again -- gimme a call. Having people be driven around in little pods in cities when there' perfectly good public transportation is just a waste.
And here's a farming issue in CA that needs immediate attention!
---
Farmers want California to change its autonomous tractor ban
NBC News
Aug 9, 2025
In some states, autonomous farming equipment is put to work on farms, doing things like spreading fertilizer or getting rid of insects. But in California, these robots aren’t allowed to operate on their own. State safety regulators say operators have to be at the controls, with few exceptions. But farmers say that hurts their business, and could impact food prices for the rest of the country. NBC Bay Area’s Bigad Shaban has a closer look.
Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times,
Artificial intelligence-powered harvesters, drones, and precision farming systems are quickly entering the mainstream of American agriculture. At its core, the technology promises efficiency and sustainability and carries a potential solution to a decades-old farming problem: the need for physical labor.
As the capabilities of robotics evolve, many jobs that once required human hands are being delegated to machines. Some artificial intelligence (AI) developers working on integrating this technology into America’s farms say early data support the possibility of a major farm labor force reduction.
This all assumes there's some sort of benefit to being the early proving ground for emerging autonomous technology. In reality it's likely more favorable for the aforementioned "liberal cities" to let others take the brunt of dealing with the bad first versions and then onboard the downstream improvements. If you lived in Texas you'd know there are some pretty steep societal and environmental costs to the laissez faire policy climate.
Phoenix already tested the bad first (and second and third) versions of Waymo's technology between 2018 and 2024! If a city jumps on board in 2026 they are doing exactly what you describe.
NYC, Boston, and Seattle have strong labor protections for drivers, so I expect Waymo to see the most pushback there from labor — and that already seems to be how it’s playing out.
I started using Waymo’s in SF a day or so after they allowed early signers to start.
They’re quite surprising -the first thing you notice is they drive exactly at the speed limit. Then they stop at all red lights and stop signs. Their scanning system is 360-degrees and above the car down - phenomenal.
One you are used to the ghostly steering wheel turns, you realize that these things are fantastically safe - you don’t have the sensation of a need to monitor as with an unknown human driver.
The red/blue divide is just evidence that blue states are functionally much more conservative than red states, which has been true for a few decades. The “illiquidity” of housing in a California is a manifestation - housing must be conserved as it was around 1960, irrespective of harms that it brings to young people.
The hidden ultra-conservative setup buried in liberal politics is one of the most humorous paradoxes I know of in recent decades.
Your premise is that driverless taxis result in a net quality of life improvement for residents of the areas they operate in. That is very far from proven as yet. There is no real downside for an individual state or city to wait and see how it plays out in places where it is implemented. If it turns out to be a great boon, then constituents will clamor for it to be enabled in their area.
Personally, as a resident of a blue city I'd prefer to see us take a more progressive approach and help to pioneer life-saving technologies.
That's fair. I think it comes down to how optimistic you are that these things will save time/money/lives compared to uber/lyft and how soon. My read is that it's unlikely to make much difference any time soon, and it's a toss-up as to whether they make things measurably "better" in some way in their cities in the next 5-10 years. But like I said, once it takes off somewhere at real scale, it will be pretty apparent that it's making things better in some measurable way. And then cities that waited will only be a year or so behind if they want to open the floodgates.
For one thing, the data is Already unambiguous as to its use of accident safer, cleaner, assault safer vis Ride share. Just look at the number of assaults in Ubers today. It's something like 5-10 per day globally.
Have you experienced a Waymo? Everyone that does says “game, set, match.” Far superior experience.
Oh and it's cheaper for the user, not stinky, and quiet. Can get a lot done in a nice quiet AV.
I THOUGHT the left wanted a world of AVs. Now you have that possibility and “pffft”?
I don't think it's been cheaper any time I've looked, but it's clearly a much more pleasant experience.
The left is driver politically by unions and the unions are afraid of the loss of the driving jobs autonomous cars will cause.
It's not only actual driving jobs but delivery jobs as well.
Would you be willing to walk to the curb to pick up a package delivery from a self-driving car if the S&H cost was a few $$ less?
One more thing. You think these cities that wait will just snap their fingers and get AV companies to dance? They're prioritizing willing, not stone aged thinking cities. Scheduled out resources and city build out.
"And then cities that waited will only be a year or so behind if they want to open the floodgates."
---
Not true. It takes time to map cities and Waymo/others will be concentrating on those places where the services are welcome. It could be far longer than one year to roll out new service.
Uber is planning to rollout its own autonomous car service in 2026.
I will take a Waymo every time instead of an Uber. It removes the wildcard of the possibility of a bad or, for example, overly-aggressive driver. Waymo is safe, predictable, dependable, and efficient, in addition to being clean and pleasant. As a bonus, much safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.
In the future, autonomous vehicles will be able to link with each other and operate like a train, eliminating most of the gap between vehicles, and the oscillating size of those gaps, that characterize traffic with human drivers who must necessarily constantly react to what other drivers are doing. This will greatly improve the capacity of roadways and speed the average flow of traffic. That will benefit everyone in a variety of ways.
Sorry but calling this a "life-saving technology" as if it's a clear win that needs to be implemented at the earliest possible time is a bit of a stretch. We don't know for certain how mass adoption in dense cities will work out in the broadest sense.
The main benefits of this technology are not to people to but to Google and its shareholders. What pricing plans do they plan to guarantee once they have made it impossible to make a living as a taxi or uber driver? What will they be offering to displaced workers by way of compensation? This is a clear case of the costs being externalized while benefits are privatized. New York City already had to help out taxi drivers who were underwater because the post-Uber value of their medallions had plummeted. The recent mayoral election singled out affordability as a major issue while pointing to public transportation (free buses) as a pathway toward achieving that.
There are also cultural issues to contend with. In a complex ecosystem that includes people, animals, property, and other cars, driverless cars have challenges that you might not predict. Consider this recent NYT piece on the death of a cat: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/us/waymo-san-francisco-kit-kat.html
As one person interviewed puts it "“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
Another issue: surveillance. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation most states don't have (yet) have laws that ensure 4th Amendment protections in the securing of warrants before accessing stored footage from driverless cars (among other vehicles). Let's figure out the surveillance piece before we get ahead of ourselves overselling the benefits of this technology.
Finally, what about politics? Google fights any regulation in the public interest tooth and nail; they've shown that they're ready comply the demands of autocrats. Is this really the right time to replace taxi and ride share drivers with a fleet of vehicles controlled by a tech company that already has too much power?
Democracy matters. Blue cities opted in favor of Lyft/Uber and helped their taxi drivers accordingly; but their "wait and see" seems exactly right to me. Let's see if the benefits outweigh the many costs.
I seriously doubt very much that anyone is going to move from a blue city to a red one because of allegedly cheaper and safer taxis. For the moment your notion of the "progressive approach" smacks of technolibertarianism.
That NYT article on the death of the cat seemed to show exactly the opposite to me! We know what company is to blame for the death of this cat. But there are dozens of other cats that have been killed by human drivers, and there's no evidence that *any* of them have been held accountable, or even identified!
Do you mean that you think the NYT covers cat deaths as a matter of course? They covered this one clearly b/c the experience meant something to people. The idea is that if a human driver ran over a cat in the view of other people, the person would likely do something human to acknowledge what they had done to a living creature in the sight of other humans. Or if they didn't they would be considered an asshole and maybe someone would note the license plate and call the police. The Times would not be involved to document this utterly quotidian fact of life--a case of people having adjusted to and developed norms to contend with the downsides of cars.
That this cat death was in part symbolic of other things to these people tells us something that is as real as gradual improvements to self-driving technology. People are sick of callousness and cruelty and they can see tech companies complicity, gaslighting, hubris, and greed in the way that AI is being foisted on the public and in the cozying up to autocracy in exchange for a nonregulatory environment.
One day in some snowy city a Waymo will not recognize that it has killed a small child and it will shock people to their core. If it's a blue city there will likely be legislation in place to investigate the reasons and/or compensate families in a way deemed appropriate by a civilized society. It will be far from perfect just like it is not perfect now when a human driver is responsible. But it will likely be blue cities that develop the norms such as they are.
As it happens I was just in DC for a conference, the blue city where Tim lives and took multiple Lyfts. Every driver was polite, hard-working, and friendly. They respected my privacy when I needed it and chatted about places to get good Ethiopian food when I needed that. I am not sorry that cities like DC and NY give such people a place to work in and people like me a chance to encounter them. San Francisco, which used to be one of my favorite cities, is not the place that it was 20 years ago. Austin has been ruined by the tech industry inflex--many are leaving for bluer cities as soon as they can. The notion that red cities offer any advantage to inhabitants beyond lower taxes is on its face unproved. Higher taxes and more regulation are not in place to stymie technological progress, but to deliver certain norms and qualities of life that many people value: people in Scandinavia or even Paris are by and large happy with the tradeoffs. In the US people choose where they live for complex reasons but young people in particular love blue cities. Employers know this.
I like reading Tim's Substack but on this issue he is misreading a social choice. Public transit is the most important investment for dense cities as anyone with a fact-based view of the world should recognize; but for some needs or preferences, cars are necessary. Uber/Lyft offers good options for those who need them when they can't hail a cab (in NY they are not always cheaper than a yellow cab and in some instances more expensive). The point is that when (or if) NYC or Boston is ready to invite Waymo to deliver their service, Google will come running.
In the meantime, these companies are not popular and as any New Yorker will tell you, the biggest dangers to pedestrians come from delivery drivers whose unsafe pace is mainly down to algorithmic manipulation.
The NYT also reported thousands of incidents of sexually inappropriate behavior by ride share drivers. Use of this technology is unambiguously a clear win for people who want to ride in a vehicle where they won’t get assaulted.
So? NYT has also reported on pervasive lying and layoffs in the tech industry, traffic snafus due to Waymos, and rampant inequality to the point of destabilizing democracy b/c of upward distribution to a tiny investor class (particularly multi-billionaires in tech and their investor allies). That's just a few of the relevant issues.
To wit, your logic here is a bit faulty.
1. Uber needs better background checks (I think this is actually being done).
2. Those using ride shares can adopt best practices to reduce any chance of assault. e.g, https://rainn.org/strategies-to-reduce-risk-increase-safety/tips-for-safer-ridesharing/
3. Dense cities need more investment in safe public transit (often being done).
4. For you personally: Better understanding of the meaning of "unambiguously a clear win" so as to avoid hasty generalizations and strawman arguments ;)
So, I’m not aware of a Waymo sexually assaulting anyone.
It’s not a straw man. If people want an alternative transportation option where they perceive less risk of sexual assault, I believe they should have that option.
They have that option already. It's called a yellow cab, public transportation, or renting or buying a car. It's a total strawman since the number of sexual assaults is small and can easily be mitigated even further with better background checks and best practices (1 and 2) above.
[ROTFLOL]
It is a big mistake to limit technological and human progress because Uber and Lyft drivers may lose their jobs (did those ride share drivers pay compensation to taxi drivers whose jobs they took?) or by making the death of a street cat more important than the greatly reduced risk of accidents that Waymo has already documented.
And it is a great mistake to assume that Waymo adoption for NYC is progress, technological or otherwise. A given technology needs to offer the right benefits at the right time under the right conditions. Waymo doesn't for NYC right now but it might in the nearish future. Time will tell.
NYC taxi drivers didn't lose jobs; and many became ride share drivers. But those who owned medallions were bailed out by city taxpayers (some of whom were probably ride share drivers). Some of that was offset by ride share users through a tax.
As to the "greatly reduced risk of accidents" it's not been documented in NYC and it's been questionably documented everywhere else (everyone knows that comparing the number of miles during training on a highway to the situation of driving in NYC is a clear case of an apple and an orange).
Re the cat: read what I wrote which had nothing to do with weighing the cat's life against a human life; it was to do with complex cultural issues that need to be contended with in ways that make sense to as dense a city as NY.
Bottom line: NYC citizens lose NOTHING by waiting. They are not limiting "technological and human progress" which, even in the narrow frame of driverless technology will proceed just fine without them. They are making a social decision that works well for their city; and if they decide they want driverless they will get it...fast.
Sorry if this isn't what Peter Thiel or the Cato Institute will tell you :)
NYC is already losing finance jobs and is becoming a city that lives off of Medicare scams.
Sure, if you say so.
Can you go to a shitty 3rd world country and live in mud huts? Why are you in America
What do you mean? It's pretty straightforward - this is a new service that many people like better than existing ones like Uber and Lyft, and no one has shown any way that it makes things worse for non-users, so there's no real downside for an individual state or city to go ahead and do it.
"No real downside"? How do you know?
Hilariously, when I googled "impact of self-driving cars on San Francisco taxis," looking for an economic analysis, here's what AI Overview delivered: "Self-driving taxis in San Francisco have negatively impacted human-driven taxis and the city's transit systems by increasing traffic congestion, interfering with emergency services, and causing unpredictable disruptions. These "robo-taxis" have caused significant delays, blocked emergency vehicles, and sometimes act erratically around pedestrians and other cars, prompting a call from city officials to slow the expansion of their services."
So in your view these blue cities are being so irrational it's not even worth mentioning their specific concerns? Labor and safety issues don't seem like something we should just ignore.
I was trying to keep this post brief. But I've written about both the safety issues (Waymo has an excellent safety record) and the labor issues in previous articles, and I expect to cover them further in the future.
Sounds good, thanks Timothy.
Tim, I've been thinking a lot about policy ideas to ease the AV transition for rideshare drivers. Might be a good guest post/discussion for me to publish on Understanding AI if your'e up for it :)
Labor issues? You should have dictated this comment to a typist, then mailed it in by USPS instead - so that typists, letter carriers and truck drivers may hold onto their jobs.
Yawn. Do technolibertarians have a listicle of supposedly killer counterarguments.
The calculator! The horse and buggy! What Socrates said about writing (though it was actually Plato WRITING about what Socrates allegedly said about writing)!
It's as if the ability to contemplate anything beyond the technology-du-jour has been stunted by a narrow fixation on technology. I know this will hardly matter but root of the word TECHNOLOGY is in TECHNE--which is Greek for an art or skill.
Automated technologies need to serve humans, not the other way around. Typewriters offered popular techniques for producing legible text--as did word processors and later voice recognition. Waymo's parent company is a serial enshittifier that habitually lies about data privacy (I do still use Chrome b/c its convenient.)
I don't know where you live, but inhabiting a dense city involves complex social interactions with people and taxi and gig-drivers are founts of useful knowledge. I'm not against driverless cars for places that want them; they have their benefits and other cities have borne through many of their early harms.
But I can tell you that right now with cities under siege from a lawless autocrat and big tech falling into line in favor of their own interests, I'm not sorry to have taxis and ride share drivers from multiple companies in my city. "AI" is concentrated, surveillant, and under-regulated power rigged to benefit the interests of a tiny elite. Around 20 individuals are now directing the plus-trillion-dollar infrastructure buildout. Time to wake up from technoutopian slumbers.
In Boston, the unions are protesting and fighting back against Waymo. We heard 2nd hand that the Mayor may be supporting this. A bunch of us in AI believe this is a wrong for safety and reputation reasons. We started a petition for "Bostonians Supporting Waymo"
https://www.change.org/p/approve-the-use-of-waymo-taxis-in-boston?recruiter=1395561614&recruited_by_id=b5e0f2d0-c23c-11f0-aa5d-25741a1cfc5c&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=starter_onboarding_share_personal&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_490886668_en-US%3A9
I saw a Waymo in the DC area last week, so it appears that they are doing testing here.
Yes. But I bet there was a safety driver behind the wheel, which is not the case in Miami.
For starters
1. > 80% reduction in accidents
2. Far fewer fatalities
3. Quiet CLEAN AVs
4. Waymo's don't assault children or women
5. Big reduction in jammed parking and traffic coming
Let the Blue States arrogantly continue their unscientific, uninformed slide
into the abyss.
My family, for a paper my son was writing for an internship, studied many of these aspects. One thing we did in the LA area was test simultaneous ride hail, same start-finish, vs Waymo. The comparable ubers were consistently more by 10-15% Moreover, NO TIPS (+15% ADDITIONAL savings) No rating system BS. WAYMOS don't cancel on their way to meet you because they got a better fare (say LAX) Suffice to say it's not even close. Once people start using them, it's over.
Many of these blue cities are just harder to drive in. The roads are often narrower and there’s ice and snow. To what extent does this cause these cities to take a slower approach?
San Francisco has narrow, hilly and famously curvy streets, not to mention frequent fog so I don’t think those issues impact Waymo cars very much. Teslas that don’t have Lidar may have a harder time with fog. Snow and ice may be harder, but with plowed streets and snow tires, I don’t think any physical barriers are as significant as political opposition.
Not trading my tractor in for a waymo lol. When you got a vehicle that I can tell to go plough a field around, change out to the disk harrow, adjust the blades, and go over it again -- gimme a call. Having people be driven around in little pods in cities when there' perfectly good public transportation is just a waste.
Here you go:
https://werkey.co/en-us/blogs/news/autonomous-tractors-and-agricultural-robots-guide-for-2025
And here's a farming issue in CA that needs immediate attention!
---
Farmers want California to change its autonomous tractor ban
NBC News
Aug 9, 2025
In some states, autonomous farming equipment is put to work on farms, doing things like spreading fertilizer or getting rid of insects. But in California, these robots aren’t allowed to operate on their own. State safety regulators say operators have to be at the controls, with few exceptions. But farmers say that hurts their business, and could impact food prices for the rest of the country. NBC Bay Area’s Bigad Shaban has a closer look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iczGlx5QEcs
Why More Farmers Are Turning To AI Machines
Monday, Aug 25, 2025 - 05:55 PM
Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times,
Artificial intelligence-powered harvesters, drones, and precision farming systems are quickly entering the mainstream of American agriculture. At its core, the technology promises efficiency and sustainability and carries a potential solution to a decades-old farming problem: the need for physical labor.
As the capabilities of robotics evolve, many jobs that once required human hands are being delegated to machines. Some artificial intelligence (AI) developers working on integrating this technology into America’s farms say early data support the possibility of a major farm labor force reduction.
...
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/why-more-farmers-are-turning-ai-machines
This all assumes there's some sort of benefit to being the early proving ground for emerging autonomous technology. In reality it's likely more favorable for the aforementioned "liberal cities" to let others take the brunt of dealing with the bad first versions and then onboard the downstream improvements. If you lived in Texas you'd know there are some pretty steep societal and environmental costs to the laissez faire policy climate.
Phoenix already tested the bad first (and second and third) versions of Waymo's technology between 2018 and 2024! If a city jumps on board in 2026 they are doing exactly what you describe.
NYC, Boston, and Seattle have strong labor protections for drivers, so I expect Waymo to see the most pushback there from labor — and that already seems to be how it’s playing out.
I started using Waymo’s in SF a day or so after they allowed early signers to start.
They’re quite surprising -the first thing you notice is they drive exactly at the speed limit. Then they stop at all red lights and stop signs. Their scanning system is 360-degrees and above the car down - phenomenal.
One you are used to the ghostly steering wheel turns, you realize that these things are fantastically safe - you don’t have the sensation of a need to monitor as with an unknown human driver.
The red/blue divide is just evidence that blue states are functionally much more conservative than red states, which has been true for a few decades. The “illiquidity” of housing in a California is a manifestation - housing must be conserved as it was around 1960, irrespective of harms that it brings to young people.
The hidden ultra-conservative setup buried in liberal politics is one of the most humorous paradoxes I know of in recent decades.
Totally oblivious to it all.