Robotaxis could be coming to Boston. At least, that’s the hope of Waymo, a subsidiary of the parent company of Google, which has been testing autonomous vehicles locally.
But for some local politicians and labor unions, it’s an over-my-dead-body situation. Driverless cars could be the harbinger of a new era of road safety, but some say they could also be a job killer.
To understand more behind the controversy, GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz spoke with PJ Vogt, host of the podcast Search Engine, which recently published a two-part story on the technology: On the history of driverless cars and one on the praise and pushback they’re facing here in the Commonwealth. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Mark Herz: Let’s start with a recent poll that showed almost three in four voters in Massachusetts oppose driverless vehicles here, and said that safety concerns and job losses are top issues. You certainly heard about that even before the poll came out when you came up to cover a couple of Boston City Council hearings. So tell us about it.
PJ Vogt: As you said, there were two hearings, about four hours each. And really, the predominant sort of thrust of the conversation was concern about job loss. I think that is where the people who are worried about this technology have a real point. There’s something like 75,000 rideshare drivers, mainly Uber and Lyft, in Boston. In a world where cheap, freely available, driverless cars are everywhere, it’s really hard to imagine that those workers have job security. So they’re concerned. You also have concern from other labor union members who drive for a living, such as delivery drivers, ambulance drivers, who think if autonomous vehicles come for these jobs, it might not be very long before they start to move up the ladder and take more jobs.
Herz: I would say one of your main characters in the story is our own Boston City Councilor, Julia Mejia. Here’s her questioning Matt Walsh, Waymo’s regional head of state and local public policy, at one of these hearings:
Matt Walsh: If drivers that currently work for Uber or Lyft should decide that they want to work in the autonomous vehicle industry, there will be opportunities for them to do so.
Julia Mejia: And what would their job title be?
Walsh: I’m not going to sit here and sort of speculate what their job opportunities would be.
Mejia: So let’s just come to terms with the fact that we are creating a hostile environment for our hardworking people who are no longer going to have work.
Walsh: I appreciate the question.
Herz: So he was well-prepared. I remember you said he knew what he was coming to be a piñata, right?
Vogt: Yes, he was very much a piñata. The part of the debate that Waymo, in my opinion, hasn’t really been engaging with is job loss. The part of debate that I think opponents of this technology are not totally engaging with is safety. I do think that the safety data for these cars is really, really compelling. And it’s hard. It’s two very real social concerns that are really hard to balance.
Herz: Well, tell us about the safety thing. One thing that occurs to me, talking with one of my colleagues before, I said, “Well, a robot’s never gonna check its social media feed or text someone while driving.” That’s one thing that occurs me.
Vogt: Yeah, it’s not going to check its phone, it’s not going to drink and drive, it’s just not going to get angry, tired, or bored. Things that human beings, unfortunately, routinely do. The safety data we have so far, so these cars have driven something like 200 million miles, I believe. In that time, they get in close to 90% fewer serious accidents than human beings. Which is just a really big deal. So far they have not caused any fatal accidents, although that data is less of a big deal just because actually fatal accidents caused by humans are relatively rare. And so you would need more miles driven to know definitively that they’re safer in that regard. But the fact that they are causing way fewer accidents, you could imagine a world where, if these were rolled out widely, the experience so many of us have had of knowing someone we love who died in a car accident could become something that was rare instead of common.
Herz: And also, you covered how the disabled community came out in force. So lay out how they say it would change their lives.
Vogt: So for disabled riders, one of their big perennial complaints is that discrimination from Uber and Lyft drivers, they say is pretty frequent. What’ll happen is someone who is blind with a service dog or somebody who requires a wheelchair to get around will call for an Uber, the Uber driver will come, they’ll see that this is a rider who is going to take up a little bit more time or bring a dog into their car, and they’ll just sort of drive on by. Uber and Lyft both say that they don’t tolerate this behavior, that they’ve sent out HR videos. If you talk to disabled riders, they say that this happens. And for them, the idea of a car that would have to pick them up that wouldn’t discriminate against them is really, really exciting. And while those Bostonians use public transit, there’s places that public transit cannot easily take you. If they want to go to a trailhead somewhere, if they want go somewhere that is not perfectly served by buses and trains. The idea that they’d hit a button on their phone, a car would come, they could get into it, is really exciting.
Herz: And so you came to Boston to see what this resistance was to robotaxis that Waymo wants to roll out. There’s also resistance in DC and in your hometown where you’re sitting right now, New York. So is there a definable anti-driverless car trend? And if so, what do you think is behind it all?
Vogt: There certainly is, and we’re at this very funny equilibrium where if you live in a red or purple state, you either already have this technology or can imagine a world where it’s coming to you quickly. If you live a blue state, there’s real resistance. And a lot of that is about how blue states tend to take labor unions much more seriously, take workers’ rights much more serious, and so you have politicians who don’t want to disappoint those constituencies. I think also maybe, driverless cars are artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence powers them and I think blue states are maybe a little more likely to just have real skepticism about that tech. But it’s interesting. It’s interesting to imagine a world, say five or 10 years from now, where in half of America, these cars will be routine and normal, and in half America, they just might not be.
Herz: What do you think could win people over? Anything?
Vogt: What the data shows is that in cities where the technology’s rolled out, the technology itself is very persuasive. Like, I’ve ridden in these cars. The first time I got into the car, I felt like I was doing something insanely risky. The second time I got in, it felt insanely normal. The actual experience of sitting in one, they’re a better driver than I am. They’re calmer, their sensors work better than my eyes. So I think what might win people over is that as the tech rolls out, In America, we are allowed to visit states that we do not live in, so I think people will go places, they’ll try it, and there will be consumer pressure to have this technology be available. The hope I had with the story is, if you believe that a lot of technological progress is fairly inevitable, I would really like our elected officials to start thinking about, “Well, how do we help workers who might be vulnerable to this? What can we offer them besides a promise to stop this?” A promise which I’m not totally convinced is really going to hold long term.
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