As expected, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles (AVs) hit the streets of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn in July. Although regulations set by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (DOT) currently require a driver to be onboard, ready to take the wheel in an emergency, we’ve seen what can happen when a massive tech company, with nearly unlimited resources, decides to bully its way into NYC’s transportation industry.
They call it “disruption,” and that’s a strangely accurate definition, although often not in the way that these companies and their investors pretend to mean. Unfortunately, the last time NYC’s transportation industry was “disrupted,” countless people and businesses were devastated financially, to the point where drivers literally committed suicide – including my good friend and Black Car News columnist, Doug Schifter.
According to a CNN article, Alphabet Inc. – a multinational conglomerate and parent company of both Waymo and Google, “considered one of the world’s most valuable companies” – reported a net income of $100 billion in 2024. Although “Alphabet does not disclose the financial performance of Waymo… the segment of the company that includes Waymo reported a $4.1 billion loss last year, even as Alphabet poured in $5.6 billion. That loss is little more than a rounding error for [the] company.”
Clearly, Alphabet can afford to lose money with Waymo for many years to come. In fact, they seemingly expect to. Do they care that tens of thousands of drivers will lose their jobs, and the companies that serve them will be decimated when a huge portion of the industry collapses? Clearly not.
Thankfully, as I mentioned in my last column, industry leaders and driver advocate groups are banding together to battle this existential threat to NYC’s transportation industry, with the last disruption still very much on their minds, in part because so many people are still reeling from it. Representatives from the traditional black car and livery industries recently joined forces with prominent leaders representing high-volume for-hire vehicle companies and began reaching out directly to high level city officials, voicing their concerns.
A letter penned by the Black Car Assistance Corporation made several important points, “on behalf of a broad coalition representing significant sectors of New York City’s ground transportation industry,” including:
- AVs poses a direct risk to the livelihoods of tens of thousands of professional drivers, the overwhelming majority of whom are low-income individuals from immigrant and minority communities. There is no comprehensive framework in place to retrain or support workers who may be displaced as a result.
- Waymo’s method of operation represents a high risk of the city facilitating a monopoly over autonomous for-hire vehicles.
- The impact will be felt by dispatch bases, vehicle owners, and countless ancillary businesses that stand to basically be eliminated.
- Numerous high-profile safety incidents involving AVs have occurred across the country, and NYC’s streets present challenges markedly different from the relatively controlled environments where they have been tested to date. Severe weather, heavy pedestrian volumes, complex construction zones, and ambiguous road markings create conditions that are likely to trigger edge-case failures, with potentially catastrophic results.
- Many riders, such as elderly people and people with disabilities (together estimated to make up 30% of NYC residents), require personal assistance and depend on human drivers to travel safely and with dignity. AVs, being driverless, fail to accommodate the diverse physical and accessibility needs of elderly and disabled passengers.
Unfortunately, it seems the advent of AVs on a massive scale is inevitable, but it would certainly be nice if the people in a position to change these types of regulations pumped the brakes, despite the fact that they are dealing with a company with so much money on hand that it can consider the loss of literally billions of dollars “little more than a rounding error.” Alphabet already stated their intention to change the DOT law to allow for fully autonomous vehicles in NYC – one of the world’s largest transportation markets. We can only hope government officials will put the safety of their citizens and the financial well-being of existing companies over the desires of investors, many of whom already have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes.
