Washington Post Editorial Board – The long view of self-driving cars
Editors note: It is sad to see how far the Washington Post has fallen. Used to be so important. But now it has been reduced to a fake advertising campaign for autonomous vehicles. We shouldn’t be surprised. Bezos not only controls the Washington Post editorials, but he also is the primary backer of Zoox, another autonomous vehicle company, and they are having trouble with safety and therefore want regulation to be minimized.
See original editorial at the the Washington Post
Self-driving cars are racking up an impressive safety record, and they could save many lives when widely deployed. Yet some politicians seem to never run out of excuses to stop this progress. Consider a recent complaint about Waymo from Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts).
The autonomous vehicle firm is currently serving around 400,000 robotaxi rides per week and has thousands of employees in the United States. It also relies on remote personnel in the Philippines to guide Waymos in tricky situations.
While there may be reasonable concerns about security and cultural mismatch with foreign call centers, the company says the operators don’t actually drive the cars. Instead, “They step in only during edge cases to provide guidance, such as when a vehicle is stuck or needs help interpreting a situation,” according to Driverless Digest.
Markey dwelt but lightly on security or cultural issues. His real complaint: “Waymo is trying to replace the jobs of hardworking taxi and rideshare drivers.” By the way, the Teamsters are making strenuous efforts to get self-driving cars banned in Massachusetts, and Markey is facing a primary challenge from Rep. Seth Moulton.
A world where most human drivers are replaced with autonomous vehicles would indeed be disruptive for taxi drivers or truckers, but the massive leaps in growth and productivity enabled by the change would make the entire country better off. More importantly, potentially tens of thousands of people would no longer be killed on America’s roads every year.
Take one example. On Jan. 23, a child stepped in front of a Waymo driverless vehicle in Santa Monica, California, but the vehicle braked itself from 17 mph to 6 mph, causing only minor injuries. The company says that its peer-reviewed collision-avoidance model indicates a human driver would still have been traveling 14 mph, meaning the Waymo may have saved the child’s life.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating, and a fuller picture may emerge. Yet it’s important to put such incidents in context. While Waymos have been involved in some accidents, so far they appear to get in fewer than human drivers.
People behind the wheel have roughly one fatality for every 100 million miles traveled, the NHTSA estimates. As of September 2025, Waymo driverless vehicles had carried passengers for more than 127 million miles, but Waymo has not been at fault in any fatal crashes. The company’s data shows that non-fatal collisions were also less common, with a roughly 90 percent reduction in crashes causing serious injuries.
Data and transparency will be key to refining this technology and convincing the public to support broader adoption. Yet healthy competition from private firms is pushing self-driving cars forward, with multibillion-dollar investments allowing for more testing. Waymo competitors include Tesla and Amazon, which was founded by Post owner Jeff Bezos.
The right question is not whether driverless vehicles have ever made a mistake; it’s whether they make fewer such mistakes than human drivers. Thus far the data suggests that self-driving is a substantial improvement, and consumers in the cities where Waymo operates don’t seem deterred.
The greatest risk to moving forward here isn’t technological but political.
See original editorial at the the Washington Post
