We are being sold a fantasy: that fleets of “autonomous vehicles” will make our streets safer, more efficient and more modern. The truth on the ground—or rather, on the asphalt—is the opposite. Companies like Waymo are unnecessary, inequitable and corrosive to the character of our cities.
In San Francisco alone, at any given hour, there are 600 to 1,000 additional robocars—mostly Waymo and growing in number—roaming our streets, not including Lyft and Uber. It’s not just drivers they lack, but passengers. More often than not, they are empty.
Rather than reducing congestion, robocars multiply it. Unlike human drivers who park once they reach their destination, these vehicles endlessly circle the city empty, like zombies trolling for a fare. They clog lanes, block buses and emergency vehicles, and force trips that once took 10 minutes to now last 40.
Even if one grants the possibility of fewer accidents someday, the larger question is: at what cost? Every dollar spent to normalize robocars is a dollar not spent on better buses, trains and subways—the very systems most people depend on. Instead of strengthening mass transit, robocars siphon resources and political will away from it.
The inequity is glaring. Waymo offers door-to-door convenience only to those who can afford it, who own smartphones and who are comfortable handing over personal and financial data to a tech company. That excludes many elderly residents, lower-income individuals and anyone without a phone in their pocket. Meanwhile, these vehicles make driving worse for those people who still rely on private cars, and they worsen conditions for those stuck on underfunded public transit. It’s the privatization of public space for private profit.
Waymo contributes nothing to local economies. It pays no wages to drivers, the very people whose income once circulated through neighborhood businesses. It doesn’t cover the cost of maintaining city streets, which taxpayers fund at the pump and through state and local taxes. Instead, revenue is funneled back to corporate headquarters, further concentrating wealth in places already split by inequality.
The safety claims, too, collapse under scrutiny. Robocars are programmed to drive cautiously, rolling along at the exact speed limit, often in groups of three or four, blocking other vehicles and slowing emergency response. They create bottlenecks, provoke frustration and have already interfered with police cars, fire trucks and ambulances. More cars on the street—especially algorithmic ones—simply mean more risk.
And what about data? Every ride is tracked, stored and monetized. Your destinations, your travel patterns, your payment history—all archived for corporate use, or for hackers and government surveillance. Riders aren’t compensated for surrendering this information; it’s just another stream of profit for companies that already know more about us than they should.
The deployment of robocars is not progress; it’s a deliberate choice by corporations and the politicians they lobby to prioritize profit over the public good. If this vision prevails, the future is a city where privately owned cars are prohibited, but instead of robust public transit, residents must rely on corporate-owned fleets of driverless taxis endlessly prowling our streets. That is not freedom of movement—it is dependency on a handful of companies that have already proven indifferent to the communities they disrupt.
No city needs robocars. What we need are investments in reliable buses, faster trains and accessible subways—public systems that foster equity, reduce congestion and strengthen community rather than eroding it.
We need robocars like a hole in the head.
Tom Zimberoff is a photographic artist and writer living in San Francisco.