I ride my bike several times a day, and I have very mixed views about Waymo, etc. I care immensely about traffic safety (so much I moved to the Netherlands).
If you took the world as it is now and left everything the same except that every car was a waymo and there were no human-driven cars left, I would be ecstatic. Humans are horrible drivers and some of them are downright murderous. If every car were a waymo I could even imagine letting my kids bike to school in the bay (where I used to live), which I wouldn't dream of now.
But I think the second-order effects of self driving cars could be terrible. It removes any incentive not to have an incredibly long commute (exacerbating sprawl), and so far every time there has been a situation where the needs of walkers and cyclists were pitted against the needs of drivers, drivers won. I think the same will happen with self-driving cars, and people will be made to wear beacons just to walk across the street.
NotJustBikes discusses this well here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
But if we have proper regulation (pretty unlikely I would say) and use things like waymo to stop humans from driving (remember, drivers are the leading killers of children in the US!) that would be great.
If you took the world as it is now and left everything the same except that every car was a waymo and there were no human-driven cars left, I would be ecstatic. Humans are horrible drivers and some of them are downright murderous. If every car were a waymo I could even imagine letting my kids bike to school in the bay (where I used to live), which I wouldn't dream of now.
But I think the second-order effects of self driving cars could be terrible. It removes any incentive not to have an incredibly long commute (exacerbating sprawl), and so far every time there has been a situation where the needs of walkers and cyclists were pitted against the needs of drivers, drivers won. I think the same will happen with self-driving cars, and people will be made to wear beacons just to walk across the street.
NotJustBikes discusses this well here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
But if we have proper regulation (pretty unlikely I would say) and use things like waymo to stop humans from driving (remember, drivers are the leading killers of children in the US!) that would be great.