Recently, I watched this video below. For the record, I enjoy NotJustBikes, I am subscribed to and post on /r/fuckcars, and I fully embrace and love transit-oriented development and walkable cities.

That said, I don’t think this video is one of NotJustBike’s best videos. He ignores or downplays the legitimate benefits of the technology and instead makes a series of slippery slope fallacies as well as straw man arguments exaggerating some imagined downsides.

Don’t get me wrong, I largely agree with his overall message about improving urbanization. Self driving cars aren’t a panacaea that will solve everything, and they do have lots of meaningful drawbacks, like the space efficiency just isn’t as good as a train.

But I believe that self driving cars are in fact a net public good, so the sheer amount of fallacies and leaps of logic in the NotJustBikes video was so annoying that I had to write this blog post.

1 Breaking down the claims

1.1 Moving fast and breaking people

The video opens with a lot of fearmongering about purported dangers of self driving cars, appealing to emotions rather than objective truth. But the numbers are clear: Waymo self driving cars are vastly safer than human drivers, as confirmed by insurance companies that have a vested interest in being objective about quantifying risk.

It is telling that in the many years and millions of miles driven, the video could only cling to two incidents — the Uber crash in Tempe (which happened almost a decade ago and Uber’s autonomous vehicle group got disbanded as a result), and the Cruise pedestrian dragging incident (which was caused by a human driver in the first place). Notably, the Waymo vehicles featured prominently in the video have not had any fatalities or at-fault injuries. In contrast, human drivers hit and kill pedestrians every day. Furthermore, not only do human drivers often negligently keep dragging the people they have run over, but they may even do it on purpose.

It is also strange that the video complains about rare instances of robotaxis blocking traffic — and then immediately encourages people to block traffic by putting cones on the vehicles. And not only is it strange, it is also cringy and not funny anymore. The “coning” trend died out a while ago. The city is very accepting of Waymo robotaxis now, in a great shift in attitudes from last year.

1.2 The real road safety issue

NotJustBikes points out the fact that US roads are poorly engineered and prioritize car convenience over pedestrian safety. This is a true and very real issue. However, it is an orthogonal topic from self driving cars, which can be implemented in either pedestrian-friendly urban environments, or in sprawling American suburbs.

The reason why cities have prioritized car convenience is due to political push from drivers. When most people drive instead of walking, they will vote for things that make driving more pleasant, especially as it is well known that people feel irrationally impatient and angry when driving.

I would wager that when the drivers are on their phones in robotaxis, they will stop paying attention to what slows a car down, and thus be less likely to care about traffic calming measures.

If anything, self driving cars thrive in pedestrian-friendly, dense cities more than in suburbs.

1.3 Promoting car centric cities

The video claims that American-trained self driving cars wouldn’t work in European cities and then ends with the bizarre assertion that tech companies won’t be able or willing to update their cars if the traffic patterns or rules change. First of all, this hasn’t even happened yet, so NotJustBikes is simply making up a fantasy scenario. Second, it is a lot easier for a company to update the software in their vehicles than to convince millions of human drivers to change their driving habits, so on the contrary it should be easier to make changes to cities.

The truth is that a lot of positive change away from car centric cities is blocked by human drivers, not by car company lobbyists or whatever. It is usually people — drivers, residents, and shopowners — who often vote and protest against things like bike lanes, such as the Fountain Avenue bike lanes in Los Angeles and bike path in Queens, New York.

In contrast, self driving cars will simply follow the rules of the road without complaining. Again, I find it quite plausible that it will be easier to implement changes like traffic calming, narrower streets, and bike lanes — when people are on their phones in robotaxis instead of at the wheel, they are much less likely to be frustrated by or to even notice infrastructure that slows cars down.

The video also makes the difficult-to-understand claim that once self driving cars have monopolized the transportation industry, they will stop prioritizing safety. But they are already safer than human drivers — does NotJustBikes think that somehow they will become more dangerous over time? Why would anyone do that? And how is a dangerous mode of transportation good business?

1.4 Cheaper taxis

Now, NotJustBikes makes a series of confused claims:

• Self driving cars are just cheaper taxis and taxis do not solve any problems
• Self driving cars are currently subsidized by tech companies and will become more expensive
• People wouldn’t take them because they prefer their own cars, so they would buy self driving cars and take up lots of parking space
• A criticism of self driving cars regarding people with disabilities, linking to an article from the Disability Visibility Project.

It seems he cannot make up his mind whether people will own them, or not, and whether it will be cheaper, or not. In any case, it’s just bad either way!

Regarding the point about Uber and Lyft subsidising the rides at the beginning and then hiking prices later, the fact is that taxis and rideshare are expensive because you have to pay a human driver. In fact, rideshare such as Uber and Lyft is by its very design meant to reinforce poverty: since each car can carry very few passengers, it is a mode of transportation that is very inefficient in terms of manpower needed. It is economically impossible to pay the drivers a reasonable living wage and affordable rideshares are only possible in places with extreme inequality. They are only feasible by exploiting a poorer underclass of workers, and back when Uber was offering very cheap rides, it had to be making a loss on every ride due to having to pay the driver. But this is unsustainable with human drivers as society advances so that the minimum standard of living rises. Whereas Uber and Lyft literally cannot afford to lower their prices, competing self driving cars have a lot of headroom for the prices to be lowered.

It is possible, of course, that self driving car companies will collude and price gouge everyone even when they are profitable, but healthy competition will likely result in lower prices. Furthermore, they would want to compete with the cost of driving private cars, which is around $0.67 per mile according to the 2024 IRS mileage rate — much lower than what Uber and Lyft are charging right now.

The notion that people would prefer to own private cars just out of a love of owning things is also a surprising insertion. This argument seems to weaken the final recommendation for public transport at the end of the video. I suppose that it is true for some people though.

Finally, regarding disabilities, the fact is that the last-mile problem of having to travel to the train station, or bus stop, is very difficult for people with disabilities. Contrary to the claims from the article from the Disability Visibility Project, self driving car companies have started offering wheelchair accessible rides, such as Waymo Wheelchair Accessible Rides in SF. And of course, as new designs like the Zoox robotaxi become a reality, the next generation of vehicles will be even more accessible.

1.5 Traffic congestion will be even worse

NotJustBikes asserts that the greater convenience of robotaxis will cause people to use them for frivolous trips and deliveries, and that people will send their kids to school in a robotaxi each, and that empty robotaxis will circle the block looking for passengers. The video mentions an anecdote where someone ordered a single tube of toothpaste. This contradicts the previous section where NotJustBikes claims that robotaxis will be just as expensive and inconvenient as taxis once companies stop subsidizing it.

1.5.1 Frivolous deliveries

One of the main reasons for frivolous orders is low cost. As NotJustBikes mentioned, once companies stop subsidizing it, it will not be so cheap as to be able to make frivolous orders.

On the other hand, if the cost of getting the good delivered is actually so low that you can get goods delivered for such a low price without subsidies, then that’s actually amazingly convenient. For sure, the number of vehicles may increase. But, without human drivers, deliveries can be done by space-efficient, low-speed delivery robots rather than full-fledged cars. In China, delivery robots take up barely more room than a bicycle and can travel in the bike lanes.

Of course, as density increases, metro systems still reign supreme. In China, actually, they have subway train cars dedicated to delivering goods, and autonomous delivery robots can drive into the station to drop off or pick up their goods from the trains.

1.5.2 Sending kids to school

For every suburban mom who sends each child in a separate robotaxi, there is a suburban mom who used to have to make a round trip just to fetch her child from school, who can now just let her child take a robotaxi home. Having robotaxis for one-way trips instead of having to drive someone to their destination (and having to drive the car back, and then repeating this later to pick them up) is likely a more common scenario that would reduce traffic. Letting children get to school by robotaxi would also allow them to get more sleep in the morning, which is very beneficial to their development.

Of course, it would be even better if everyone could live close enough to school that biking or walking is possible, but that is not feasible everywhere.

It’s also worth pointing out that currently Waymo’s terms of service prevents children from riding solo.

1.5.3 Empty robotaxis circling

While it’s true that robotaxis are much less space efficient than buses or trains, they can be more space efficient than existing cars, rideshare, and delivery services.

Currently, tons of Uber drivers are driving around looking for rides, and Doordash drivers are taking up parking spots all around restaurants in hopes for a meal delivery opportunity.

Much of this unnecessary driving would be gone if the cars are driverless. Delivery vehicles can be smaller, as mentioned. For robotaxis, centralized dispatch would be able to more efficiently position them rather than individual drivers all flocking to hot spots or randomly roaming, looking for a gig. It is wasteful and costly to have a car spend energy driving for no reason, and you can be sure that this waste will be kept to a minimum out of pure capitalist greed.

1.6 Eliminating pedestrians, speed limits, and traffic lights

The video makes a classic slippery slope argument about “AV companies will demand” this and that. It makes the hilarious claim that AV companies will put up fences around the streets, eliminate speed limits, and eliminate street crossings.

Self driving car customers are pedestrians, actually! The moment a person gets out of the self driving car, they turn into a pedestrian. Making the city unnecessarily hostile to pedestrians makes no sense from a business perspective. On the contrary, self driving cars thrive in dense urban places full of desirable destinations to enjoy.

Eliminating speed limits also makes little sense. Whereas individual drivers are needlessly impatient due to psychological factors, there is little benefit for a robotaxi to go faster. Currently, Waymos will prioritize routing in a safer way even if it takes longer, and it avoids highways. The Zoox robotaxi does not go on highways either and it physically can’t even go very fast (the maximum speed is 75 mph and it is currently limited to 45 mph in practice). Not only is going faster dangerous, it greatly increases energy usage in a quadratic fashion, not to mention wear and tear on the vehicle itself.

The video proceeds to bash pedestrian bridges, as though it had something to do with self driving cars.

Then the video makes a tangent about eliminating traffic lights and having vehicle-to-vehicle communication that lets vehicles zip through intersections without stopping. This is mere vaporware and is simply not something that self driving car companies are developing or even want.

1.7 Pollution

NotJustBikes points out that even electric cars will not eliminate pollution due to tyres, brakes, and wear on asphalt. This is true, although the video further exaggerates it by fallaciously assuming that the self driving cars will go very fast.

Compared to existing cars, there are some benefits in favour of robotaxis:

• Robotaxis can have a much smaller battery than private cars because urban transportation is mostly about short trips, and robotaxi operators do not have an irrational “range anxiety” as car buyers do. As such, they can be much lighter than privately-owned electric cars. The weight of the electronics, sensors, and computers will be negligible.
• Electric cars are not only much quieter and eliminate tailpipe emissions, but also greatly reduce brake wear thanks to regenerative braking.

Furthermore, I will also point out that, contrary to popular belief, robotaxis can be a lot more energy efficient than public transportaion. For example, the Tesla Cybercab has an efficiency of 112 Wh/km and can carry two passengers. This is about 0.4 MJ/km, or 0.2 MJ/km assuming two passengers (or perhaps 0.5 MJ/km/passenger if we consider the time it spends driving around empty).

To compare against public transportation modes, let’s compare against figures from the Transportation Energy Data Book Edition 40, Table 2.12, although the table has the caveat that

Great care should be taken when comparing modal energy intensity data among modes. Because of the inherent differences among the transportation modes in the nature of services, routes available, and many additional factors, it is not possible to obtain truly comparable national energy intensities among modes. These values are averages, and there is a great deal of variability even within a mode

The International Energy Agency provides somewhat different figures:

In any case, the Tesla Cybercab is really good and at least competitive with public transit.

1.8 Utrecht vs London, Ontario

The video then makes a comparison between Utrecht and London, Ontario. Both cities started out with similar car-dependent infrastructure, but then Utrecht decided to embrace transit-oriented development. I fully agree that obviously transit-oriented development and walkable streets are amazing, and applaud Utrecht for doing so.

However, Utrecht is a lot richer than London, Ontario, and has four times the GDP, so it is comparatively easier for it to install expensive new infrastructure. Moreover, despite having good bike infrastructure and public transport, car ownership has actually risen in the Dutch population.

The video also makes a funny statement that Utrecht managed to achieve this “without spending billions” on developing self driving technology — as though you have to spend billions for each city, rather than it being a one-time cost that can scale up to many different cities at once.

1.9 What should we do about it?

This is the section that I largely agree with. After going on a whole tirade of nonsensical fearmongering, NotJustBikes has finally arrived at — well, the exact same conclusion that every other one of his videos shares. The same urbanist vision that I agree with.

I agree that we should limit access to cars, both autonomous and otherwise. I am a big fan of walkable streets and mixed use neighborhoods. I also love public transportation. Road usage tax is probably also not a bad idea.

I suppose we differ in our attitudes on how to achieve this urban utopia though. I believe that robotaxis are helpful in reducing car dependence and will solve many problems, but NotJustBikes seems to think that they are a deleterious force to be kept in check.

2 The case for self driving cars

2.1 People will give up their cars

Some people will actually give up private car ownership for self driving cars, but not for other forms of public transit.

Many people who enjoy travelling by car value the following things:

• Comfort
• Perceived safety
• Convenience

Self driving cars provide these, but in some American cities, other forms of public transit may be lacking in certain respects. For example, a common complaint is that public transportation is perceived as less safe due to rampant drug use and property crime, even though violent crime is in fact quite rare. Thanks to the availability of self driving cars, I personally know people living in San Francisco who are not planning to buy a car because, in addition to public transportation, Waymo provides the necessary flexibility for special trips.

Once fewer people buy cars, there will in fact be less parking needed, and then walkable development becomes even more feasible.

2.2 Biking becomes safer

The main reason why most people don’t bike in the US is because it is dangerous with all the cars around. Self driving cars simply don’t hit bicycles, while distracted, negligent, and sometimes belligerent human drivers often do.

If all the cars were replaced by self driving cars, I would buy a bicycle the next day. This sentiment is shared by many on reddit.

Of course, dedicated bicycling infrastructure, like in Utrecht, would be better. But literally rebuilding all the existing stroads and building that much bike infrastructure takes a lot of capital and political willpower and the probability of that happening, say, in San Jose where I live, is practically zero.

There is a benign reinforcement loop where safer self driving cars allow more people to bike, and more people biking results in more money being spent on bike infrastructure, and then everyone wins in the end.

2.3 Compatibility with public transport

Self driving cars are fundamentally compatible with public transportation in a way that private automobiles are not.

The sad fact is that currently, large swaths of the US are composed of boring suburbs that are simply too spread out. The only way to get to public transportation is, ironically, to drive. And once you start driving, well, why not drive all the way?

As such, “park-and-ride” schemes are a horrible failure. Parking lots take up a huge amount of space around transit stations, making them useless to anyone else but drivers, and the drivers themselves find it neither cost-effective nor time-efficient to park their cars in order to take transit.

Imagine getting from South San Jose to San Francisco. The Caltrain should be superior in every way to driving, in theory. Especially with its recent upgrades, it is efficient and comfortable and competitive with driving in terms of speed. The problem of course is that my house is too far away from the Caltrain station and the bus that goes from my house to there only comes once every 30 minutes and needs 20 minutes of walking.

Having robotaxis would solve this problem, and then parking spots around “park-and-ride” stations can be eliminated and turned into housing and shops.

2.4 Maybe some public transport just aren’t that good?

Some public transit systems in the US are just so underutilized that they are just not that good. San Mateo buses cost $4.30 per passenger mile which is more than a robotaxi.

For less densely populated areas, I think that robotaxis should replace these infrequent and ineffective public transit and arterial trains and buses should get more funding and improvements.

Consider the topic of getting to the Caltrain station in the previous section. The bus comes once every 30 minutes and you’d have to walk 20 minutes to get there. Nobody wants that. It’s essentially a useless service that costs the city a lot of money. Anecdotally, the buses are always nearly empty.

Replacing those empty buses with robotaxis should actually reduce space used and encourage more ridership of actually good public transport.

2.5 Weather

NotJustBikes points out that driving in Phoenix, Arizona is “easy mode”. Apart from planning foolishness, another good reason for it to be so car-dependent is its ridiculously hot climate. It is simply unpleasant to exist outdoors, not to mention walk anywhere when the temperatures exceed 310 K.

Anyway, a strength of self driving cars is that it can function in any weather. In contrast, bicycling is unpleasant in the rain, snow, and extreme heat, and public transportation is unpleasant when you have to walk a long distance exposed to the elements to get to the bus or train station. However, taking the train becomes a lot more attractive if you have the option to either walk, or take a robotaxi when it’s pouring.

2.6 Carpooling

Just as Uber has implemented Uber Pool, it is quite conceivable that robotaxis will implement carpooling to further lower costs and improve efficiency.

As an aside, some people wonder why the Tesla Cybercab is a two seater. The reason is that the vast majority of car trips only have one or two people, so the aerodynamic two seater is way more efficient. It actually uses less than half the energy of some other electric cars. And don’t forget that the Model Y still exists and can function as a robotaxi if you need more seats.

3 What about the drivers?

A common criticism against self driving cars is that the efficiency gains will only serve to profit the big tech companies, leaving existing drivers penniless. However, history shows us that automation is almost always a net positive in the long run.

It is important to remember that humanity used to be mostly farmers:

• pre-1800s: 70%–90%
• 1800s: 50%–80% in industrializing regions
• 1900s: ~40% at the beginning of the century, ~5% by the mid-century in developed regions
• 2000s: 26% globally, <2% in developed countries

Thanks to improved agricultural tools and mechanization (and recently automation), nowadays in developed countries less than 2% of the population can feed the remaining 98%, and now we have enough food to feed everyone.

We note that, even with enough food to feed everyone, some people are still going hungry, even though this amount is much less than before. This is due to inequalities in society that we have yet to solve. But, to me, it is clear in retrospect that the improvements in agriculture are a net good for humanity. Although some individual farmers had a bad time with the gradual change, and some evil corporations like the United Fruit Company got rich as a result, humanity as a whole is vastly better off than before: innovations and industries (healthcare, education, technology) that benefit society wouldn’t have developed if most of the population were still focused on subsistence farming.

I personally wish for other industries that provide basic necessities for life, such as transportation, to undergo the same shift where very few people are needed to provide this necessity, freeing up the rest to work in more productive avenues. Hopefully the bulk of the work will be done by automation, just like in farming, rather than exploiting the labor of a large underclass.

Honestly, the fact that a whole human being with thoughts and dreams is relegated to the mindless task of driving an Uber or truck or whatever reminds me of the robot whose purpose in life is to pass butter. It’s a terrible waste of a human mind, just like countless human lives were wasted on subsistence farming in antiquity, and we should put an end to it as soon as possible.

In the case of agriculture, surplus labor from agriculture often took up employment in new, emerging sectors—particularly services like education, healthcare, and transportation, which became more prominent as societies became wealthier and more urbanized. As Uber drivers eventually get outcompeted by more efficient means of transportation, I have no doubt that the surplus labor will look for employment in other emerging sectors. Human beings are smart, resilient, resourceful, and adaptable.

4 Conclusion

I think self driving cars are a positive change that will improve safety, encourage more public transportation use, and improve density and urbanization, while not causing the problems of congestion and pollution described in the video. Robotaxis are especially suited to bringing these improvements to American cities that are currently entrenched in car-dependent infrastructure, and provide a useful route towards reducing car dependency.

We should be reducing car dependency in conjunction with embracing self driving cars. Self driving cars should not be singled out to be targeted by regulatory lawfare. Zoning laws should be relaxed and parking minimums should be abolished so that it is possible to build housing and shops in places where there used to be barren parking lots. Places like, say, Chinatown in San Francisco should be converted to a pedestrian-only boulevard without cars.