I think this is an awesome conversation. I agree, expecting all cyclists and riders to wear a special thingy to not die just so Uber doesn’t have to pay drivers seems like bad priorities on a massive cultural scale. I’ve worked on autonomous vehicles, I’ve been in traffic and wished I was driving one, I’ve read tons about them… I think 2 things:
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they are farther away from mass roll out than anyone thinks (maybe a limited closed rout like an airport shuttle where speeds are limited to 30mph will be sooner, but going from city, to highway, to suburban homes will be longer)
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in the mad dash to solving for the tech and eliminating human jobs (why are we in a mad dash to eliminate human jobs by the way?) we are not thinking enough about the societal implications. In some of the books I’m reading for example they suggest vastly reducing the speed limits for everyone because the AVs can’t handle the calculations… which would suck, but those are the kinds of things that could happen if big tech gets behind solving problems for AVs instead of for people.