Self-Driving Cars: Increasing Public Safety, or Destroying Human Interaction?

One of Waymo's driverless robotaxis accidentally entered a flooded roadway, prompting the company to recall about 3,800 of its vehicles. In addition to safety concerns, driverless cars have sparked a variety of perspectives: are driverless vehicles a solution to feminist issues, or are they a convenience that only benefits the Big Tech elite?

The Details: Some of the robotaxis were seen on camera driving into a flooded street and stalling in Austin, Texas, which caused other drivers on the road to have to navigate around them. The recall followed a specific incident on April 20 in which an unoccupied Waymo detected "untraversable flood water" but still proceeded at a reduced speed. The car was swept away into a creek by the floodwater. 

'Waymo is a feminist issue': Slow Boring (Lean Left bias) argued that "driving is just one part of a much broader set of responsibilities that disproportionately fall on women," naming mothers, women who care for elderly parents, and single women fearing harassment on late nights as groups who all benefit from self-driving taxis. It also argued that "if self-driving cars become more common, roads get safer," framing Waymos as a public safety benefit.

Destroying Human Interaction: The Atlantic (Left) posited that despite claims that self-driving cars improve safety and reduce crashes, "when companies talk about safety, it's not just because they care about people, but because they want to sell their product." It went on to claim that "chances are slim that the average American will benefit much financially from any of that money." Instead, Atlantic's article argued that removing taxi drivers removes crucial human interaction in the name of convenience and that it is important to preserve spaces, like taxis, that allow people to "interact with people of different backgrounds." 

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