Transportation unions gathered at City Hall on Thursday to urge members of the Transportation Committee to prevent autonomous vehicle (AV) companies like Waymo, a driverless taxi service popular in cities like San Francisco and Austin, from coming to Cambridge. Representatives from the Teamsters 25, Green Line conductors from Boston Carmen’s Union, and the newly minted App Drivers Union gathered for a press conference and then to testify in Sullivan Chamber about the economic and public safety risks associated with driverless cars.

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“A lot of the work that transit workers do goes far beyond moving a vehicle, whether it’s a bus or a trolley or a Lyft or an Uber,” said Scott Page, a Delegate for Boston’s Carmen’s Union that represents Green Line drivers, at the press conference. He pointed out robots can’t do things that transit workers often have to do, like report crime or call for medical help.

Others pointed out the obvious problem of losing their jobs. Standing before a group of Uber, freight, and train drivers holding signs that said “Wrong Waymo” and “Protect Workers, Not Robots,” Abdazi Samantar said “I used to drive a cab, but lost my business to Uber.” Now, as an Uber driver, he’s been tracking the rise of Waymo. “It feels like every time I adjust to a new reality, another technology comes along and threatens my livelihood.”

Residents have noticed Waymo cars meandering about town in recent weeks – those have drivers monitoring the vehicles, and are just mapping Cambridge’s streets for now, as use of fully AVs without driver supervision is currently not allowed by Massachusetts law. But as councillors weigh the safety and economic impacts of the technology, they also must grapple with their lack of regulatory authority when it comes to whether robots might rule the road.

Bay State the “final boss” for AVs

According to Cambridge Transportation Commissioner Brook McKenna, AV executives have indicated that they see the Boston area, with its winding streets and temperamental weather, as the “final boss” for proving that their vehicles are safe and effective in all kinds of conditions. While fully self-driving cars are legal in 21 states, mostly in the South — recent efforts in the Massachusetts State House to advance legislation authorizing them here have so far failed, despite hundreds of thousands in lobbying dollars spent by Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet.

Some would like to see the roads remain free of AVs – at least for now.

“We can’t rush headfirst into experimental technology that presents an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist,” said App Drivers Union Executive Director Autumn Weintraub during the Transportation Committee hearing. “Hundreds of thousands of drivers already serve our communities every day.”

Deploying AVs at scale could come with some known drawbacks. McKenna pointed to the issue of “deadhead miles” caused by AVs with no one in them that circle roadways, adding to traffic, instead of parking. This issue causes congestion that not only slows actual passengers down, but also ups the incidents of accidents.

“If everyone owns their own autonomous vehicle, congestion will be significantly worse than it is now,” McKenna said.

AVs currently on the road operated by Waymo have also had issues navigating situations they weren’t properly trained on. This summer, Waymo had to recall all of its nearly 4,000 robotaxis because some of the vehicles were driving through construction zones. Other high-profile incidents include one Waymo driving over lit fireworks, and another taking a frightened rider right through a police standoff.

There are also less-obvious issues, like privacy concerns arising from data collected by the cars’ sensors and camera systems. (While Waymo doesn’t sell this data, if other companies come to market, they might.)

There are also harms that can’t be predicted. At Thursday’s meeting, Greater Boston Labor Council President Darlene Lombos compared AVs in 2020 to asbestos use in construction in the 1970s.

“Industry assured us it was innovative and safe. No one asked hard questions,” she said. “And decades later, we’re still paying the price.”

But human drivers make mistakes too. According to Waymo’s self-reported data, their cars had 82 percent fewer crashes per mile driven than cars driven by humans. For crashes involving the most serious injuries, that number is 95 percent.

AVs could also be a potential “game changer” for people with disabilities, said Rachel Tanenhaus, Cambridge’s ADA Coordinator. It could help those who cannot drive and also rideshare customers with service animals, who are sometimes illegally denied passage by Uber and Lyft drivers.

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That said, she noted Waymo doesn’t currently have any wheelchair-accessible vehicles, and also warned of the danger of not having a human in the loop if a person with a disability were dropped in the wrong place.

“There are good aspects and bad aspects about Waymo for people with disabilities and older adults,” Tanenhaus said. “For those of you who are waiting for me to come down solidly on one side or the other, I’m going to disappoint you all day long because it’s complicated.”

Jobs at risk

Ebdassamad Karim left his job driving a Green Line train to become an Uber driver four years ago. He said Uber gave him flexibility so he could take care of his children, including one who has a disability.

But the company has been quietly changing its pricing algorithm. As of this year, Uber, not drivers, gets to keep the majority of fares. That has made things tough financially for Karim.

“Uber and Lyft … they’re getting greedier day after day,” he told Cambridge Day following the press conference he attended along with some of his fellow App Drivers Association members.

Still, losing his job entirely to a self-driving car would be far worse. “It’s going to make it hard for us to live and pay our rent. We have kids, we have a lot of things to do,” he said. Karim said if this happened, drivers would likely have to apply for unemployment.

While some tech moguls optimists believe that advances in AI will allow people to transition into new careers, labor advocates are looking for a more concrete plan for the tens of thousands of drivers they represent.

“We are not hearing any solutions,” Weintraub said at the press conference. Until drivers know how they “will be able to pay their rent, will be able to feed their families, will be able to take care of their communities, we are opposed to Waymo coming into our communities.”

During the committee meeting, councillors shared the concern.

“When we’re talking about working-class jobs, we’re always so quick to say, ‘Oh, [workers] can just get retrained,’ or ‘We’ll just have them do something else,” Councillor Marc McGovern said. “That’s not easy to do, nor should … people be forced into that.”

No brakes, but maybe a steering wheel

The unions did not bring a specific ask or policy before the council, other than to ask their support in opposing any state legislation that would move the needle toward authorizing AVs in the future. Most councillors at the meeting were skeptical about the technology, but admitted that there was little they could do to stop its advancement.

“Something like this is coming eventually,” said Councillor Patty Nolan. “We just morally cannot do it without thinking through and understanding the consequences.”

McGovern agreed, but offered some hope at what the local perspective could bring, referencing Cambridge’s role in establishing DNA recombination regulations fifty years ago.

While Cambridge couldn’t stop DNA technology from advancing on a national level, “It was Cambridge that set up the regulations that guided the entire industry for the country,” McGovern said. “There is a role, for us on the local level, to help.”

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