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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.