Waymo ‘Won’t Be on Your Streets Anytime Soon’
David McCabe reported for The New York Times last week about the “political roadblocks” Waymo is facing as it looks to expand around the country, particularly in New York City. City leaders are predictably worried about jobs and, crucially, safety.
“Waymo is increasingly facing political roadblocks as it tries to roll out its self-driving taxis powered by artificial intelligence nationwide. After early successes winning over politicians in California—its home state—and elsewhere, Waymo has stumbled in unlocking some of the biggest markets in the country,” McCabe wrote last Wednesday. “New York abandoned its proposal to allow self-driving taxis earlier this year. New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has said he would heavily weigh the interests of taxi drivers in deciding on rules for the technology. In Illinois, legislation to authorize the service stalled after labor unions protested. And in Washington, the city’s Council has for years delayed a decision about whether to allow robo-taxis.”
New York City isn’t particularly special in this regard, insofar as places where Waymo is entrenched—like San Francisco—there has long been pushback on its merit and utility.
I’ve made this point numerous times before, but it bears repeating: Waymo is an assistive technology, full stop. The service is not perfect—it needs to do better by wheelchair users, for instance—but the naysayers who insist on resisting robotaxis almost certainly fail to consider the genuine good they provide for people like me who are Blind and low vision. For us, driving isn’t an option, and historically we must rely on the whims of public transit or rideshare or the goodwill of family and friends to get around. Those all are good options in a vacuum, but nonetheless require us to compromise some level of agency and dignity in the process. It’s somewhat of a Faustian bargain in that sense. By contrast, with just a few taps on one’s iPhone, someone like myself can request a Waymo independently and, within a few minutes, be riding independently to the grocery store or doctor’s office or a friend’s house or wherever we need to go. This is not a trivial detail; so much of the general narrative around using autonomous vehicles is for coolness or novelty’s sake—and Waymo is cool and futuristic that way—but my affinity for it is far more pragmatic in nature.
Safety and smarts are crucial considerations, to be sure, but so should accessibility. The able-bodied masses ought to recognize what services like Waymo enable for us as people who don’t have the privilege of owning a car and driving whenever we feel like it. The problem is, the more municipalities resist Waymo ostensibly for the “betterment” of “everyone,” the more people with disabilities are going to end up collateral damage in politicians’ quixotic quest for “better” transit for the citizenry.
