> Why should San Francisco be at the bleeding edge and what will these companies give it in return?
Other than lots of high-paying jobs, tax revenues, and transit options? Other than the pedestrian that dies basically every week to cars, or the severe injury every 14 hours due to cars?
San Francisco is owed nothing. It's a city government; it really should not be in the business of twisting companies arms to extract concessions for imagined slights.
It can pass fair, objective laws in good faith. It has historically been horrible at doing that.
San Francisco is a government that represents the people who live there. If the people of San Francisco want no robot cars until they're reasonably safe, that's a call they should get to make. If that means the loss of the things you mention, all of which I doubt would change much, well, that's a choice they can make. And as an actual San Francisco resident, I personally favor cutting back on the number of robot cars until they're demonstrably much safer.
> If the people of San Francisco want no robot cars until they're reasonably safe, that's a call they should get to make.
Should they also get to issue drivers licenses and car registrations? Decide who gets to live there and who gets forced out? Issue my passport (I'm a citizen of SF)? Where does it stop, in your mind?
San Francisco is a city that oversteps its bounds as frequently as it gets away with. It does not get to make the determination if a car is safe or not; that power resides solely with the State of California and has done so for around a century. Thank god for that, or else the types of NIMBY homeowners who live here would try to ban anyone not on their street from driving there.
> And as an actual San Francisco resident, I personally favor cutting back on the number of robot cars until they're demonstrably much safer.
And as an actual San Francisco resident, SF drivers are insane sociopaths and I would gladly trust my life to a robotaxi far more than I'd trust it to my fellow city residents.
I think people hate these cars because they drive the speed limit and stop at stop signs, with a healthy dose of "clearly big tech is responsible for all our problems."
These cars are already demonstrably safer than a human driver. If the city cares about preventing fires, they'd go after what's almost definitely the #1 cause of fires - homeless encampments. If they cared about road safety, they'd go after the #1 cause of traffic incidents - human drivers who virtually never get ticketed.
About every two months I think "oh, maybe I'll ride my bike to the office." Every two months, I nearly fucking die to some entitled driver who swerves into the bike lane to skip traffic, park, or just because they're on their phone.
Frankly, you are an extraordinarily privileged SF resident if you can pretend these cars are not an improvement. I am pleased that the city has no power to ban these cars from the road; it's the same set of people I've mentioned above.
Other than lots of high-paying jobs, tax revenues, and transit options? Other than the pedestrian that dies basically every week to cars, or the severe injury every 14 hours due to cars?
San Francisco is owed nothing. It's a city government; it really should not be in the business of twisting companies arms to extract concessions for imagined slights.
It can pass fair, objective laws in good faith. It has historically been horrible at doing that.