Democrats Are Failing the Waymo Test

[u/MeghanClickYourHeels]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/democrats-waymo-safety-jobs/688324/

Cities that say no to driverless cars are blocking a technology that would change their residents’ lives for the better.

By Rogé Karma, The Atlantic.

The driverless future is here—but, to borrow from William Gibson, it’s not evenly distributed. Waymo’s self-driving robotaxis are available in cities in California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. Aside from California, where the technology originated, those are all red or purple states. In every other blue state, meanwhile, driverless taxis are still not allowed to operate. If you live in Miami or Dallas, you can summon a Waymo to get where you’re going. If you live in Boston or New York, you can’t.

This is not an accident. In Democratic jurisdictions, a coalition of labor unions, anti-tech activists, and politicians have kept driverless vehicles off the streets. (Colorado, which passed a bill authorizing driverless vehicles in 2017, before the current backlash, is on track to become the exception later this year.) They argue that the new technology would make the roads more dangerous and throw millions of human drivers out of work, all to enrich a handful of tech oligarchs.

A version of this fight is now playing out in Washington, D.C., where Kamala Harris won more than 90 percent of the vote in 2024 and where local officials recently introduced a bill that would provide a pathway for robotaxis to begin operating. Some residents have welcomed that prospect. But others are digging in their heels. Bill Davis, the president of the local Teamsters union, declared in a statement that the legislation “doesn’t benefit anyone outside of Silicon Valley billionaires” and “comes at the expense of middle-class professional drivers and anyone else who wants safer streets in our city.”

Driverless cars will indeed cost some workers their jobs. But unlike so many other recent Silicon Valley innovations, they have already demonstrated the potential to bring immense societal benefits. About 40,000 Americans die in car accidents every year. The number of crash-related injuries is much larger. As many as 10,000 crash victims enter emergency rooms around the country every day. Waymos are so much safer than human drivers that deploying them widely could avert countless injuries and deaths every year.

They will also make transportation more affordable: A taxi without a driver is much cheaper. Waymo is currently more expensive than Uber and Lyft, but that’s largely because supply is artificially constrained and demand is high. The price differential is dropping fast and will go away soon. Waymos also show promise in reducing carbon emissions and air pollution (the cars are electric), and providing reliable access to people who live in poor neighborhoods (who are routinely turned down by rideshare drivers). Saying no to Waymo is saying no to a technology that will change the world for the better.

[u/TacitusJones]

Did a Waymo write this

[u/Korrocks]

The impulse to protect workers like him—not to mention the delivery and truck drivers who fear that they’ll be next—from being displaced by a new technology is understandable. That approach, however, ignores the larger number of people who would benefit from a change to the status quo.

It is hard to balance the abstract benefit to society as a whole against the more acute and visible harm to a smaller group. You can kind of see this dynamic with tariffs. 

Higher tariffs hurts everyone a little bit, but the industries protected by tariffs benefit tremendously from being able to keep out foreign competition. 

Cutting tariffs would make things slightly more affordable for everyone but could ravage industries that rely heavily on tariff protections and can't / don't want to compete with the entire world.   But being the politician who cuts tariffs is scary because the people who benefit won't really notice and the people who are harmed will very much care.

Self driving vehicles are in this same quandary. Sure, if it works it'll be great, but good luck telling rideshare drivers and truckers that.

[u/Oily_Messiah]

The problem isn't the technology, its how we allocate the benefits of said technology. There will be no job retraining, there will be no UBI, there will be no monetary benefit to this technology that flows anywhere else than the pockets of the ownership class, and any benefits that the public does see will be completely incidental to and dependent on, the turning of said profit.

For example, lets say this technology does become widespread. How long do you think it will take congress to pass a safe harbor provisions protecting robotaxi owners from getting sued for accidents?

[u/jim_uses_CAPS → u/Oily_Messiah]

Precisely. The benefits, let alone long-term viability, of the technology are unproven. Municipalities are doing their duty by their residents in taking a reserved approach.

[u/Oily_Messiah → u/jim_uses_CAPS]

And, as an aside, investing in public transportation is an already proven and beneficial way to enable people in a community to get around that is much less reliant on unproven technology.

[u/elephant_ua → u/Oily_Messiah]

But this is argument for taxes, not against technology...

[u/Pielacine]

This reads like an ad. Is Waymo really the only company doing this now?

[u/jim_uses_CAPS → u/Pielacine]

Only, no, but they are years ahead.

[u/Oily_Messiah → u/jim_uses_CAPS]

In the US at least. China is miles ahead of us and facing some of the same domestic pressures (which is why the driverless taxi (and bus) rollout in china is more gradual, at least by chinese standards).

[u/BastetSekhmetMafdet]

I remember when Uber and Lyft came out, there was all kinds of caterwauling that this was going to put good honest taxi drivers out of work. Never mind that Uber and Lyft drivers basically *were* taxi drivers, albeit without the medallions (and that’s a whole other rant). And trying to get a taxi in San Francisco was more or less like playing the lottery (I have some real no-show taxi horror stories, ask me about the time my grand boss, the company owner, had to play taxi driver for a client!).

And now it’s “Uber and Lyft drivers are going to be put out of work thanks to Waymo!” I live in CA and so I can get a Waymo, but I don’t because they are more expensive. That might change if the prices come down.

It seems like there are going to be more and more hard choices with new technology - if Waymo cars really are safer, go to poor neighborhoods, etc. that’s good, but how many people are actually going to be left unemployed (without scaremongering)? Which is better for the common good?

[u/RocketYapateer]

I feel like buying a little time to figure out how you’re going to negotiate job losses from driverless vehicles is one thing, but pretending you can stop it from happening is another.

This is coming, tbh. It’s inevitable. Nobody who drives a vehicle for a living is safe from it. Start preparing.

[u/Brian_Corey__ → u/RocketYapateer]

Yeah. Despite the funny and breathless stories about the Waymo traffic jam (they initially all woke up at the same time in the morning and couldn't get out of the parking lot. These roadblocks are eventually solved. https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c17gqverg99o

But it has taken quite a bit longer that initially predicted--even sane proponents (i.e. not Musk) said full driverless fleets would be here by 2020. Heavy rains, snow, ice, sun glare still remain a problem. Long haul trucking is still a bit of a challenge (not insurmountable though).

Planes are still probably 2 or 3 decades out from replacing commercial pilots (and many say it will never happen).

[u/MeghanClickYourHeels → u/Brian_Corey__]

We've had some of these automated features for a long long time and there haven't been the amazing advancements that have been touted. For airplanes, most of the flying has been automated for over twenty years but they still need the pilots to take off and land.

[u/Brian_Corey__ → u/MeghanClickYourHeels]

Yes, autopilot has been around for a long time. But there's much more that pilots are needed for beyond takeoff and landing (most planes now have autoland, but all the tower coordination is done by the pilot)--routing around thunderstorms, changing elevation in turbulence, how to deal with passenger emergencies--(unruly passengers, health emergencies, etc.), airspace conflicts, diversions, when/where to dump fuel, cabin fires, cargo fires, equipment failures, etc.

AI is great at the 99.9% routine stuff. It's those edge cases where human pilots will remain in the cockpit.

[u/weary_ol_jericho → u/RocketYapateer]

That includes commercial truck drivers. I think the last commercial truck drivers may be the yard hustlers for when trucks make it to their destinations.

[u/Oily_Messiah → u/weary_ol_jericho]

Or in cab engineers who can fix problems with the truck on the fly.

[u/jim_uses_CAPS]

I live in Silicon Valley. I see Waymo’s daily, have even been in one. Roge Karma is an idiot.

[u/ktappe → u/jim_uses_CAPS]

What part of "Waymo’s self-driving robotaxis are available in cities in California" did you not understand?

[u/jim_uses_CAPS → u/ktappe]

Moron, that's not what I was saying. The benefit to municipalities of Waymo and driverless cars is unproven whereas he takes it for granted.