The claim that they can undercut human driven taxis I guess, but then as all enshittified services it won't stay true. They would only do that until people have become used to them then jack up the rates far beyond what cabbies ever were

You don't have a creepy driver transport you/know your address.

I can see the value of data networks. If every car on the road is self driving and interconnected, they know where every other car is and can cooperatively adjust their speed and routes to basically eliminate traffic. Even if it's just every car in a taxi fleet, they can still share their sensor data to build a better operating map from multiple angles. The privacy side of that is rough, but it could drastically reduce accidents compared to individual human drivers.

The theory is that you can own a fleet of robotaxis while you have a job without the hassle of maintaining vehicles or employing drivers.

The fact that all self drive taxis are company owned and no plate owners will touch them tells the real story.

Question: what value do self driving taxis add to regular taxis?

Additional profit for the owners.

Paying drivers cuts into the profits.

Computers don't get drunk, high, distracted, or sleepy.

Humans are absolutely awful at safely operating 2000lb+ death machines.

Decreased costs and increased safety.

Regular taxis kill a lot more people

Jobs are always going to be replaced by new technology and falling back to omg the jobs, as a means to prevent technology from advancing isnt the right way to think about things.

Maybe you should move to NJ so someone can pump your gas for you, or only buy from farms that hand pick everything.

Ive been in so many taxis driven by humans and feared for my saftey. People have been assaulted by drivers. The AVs can see all around them and will ultimately be definitively safer than a human can ever be. People are terrible drivers as seen by the immense death (1.16 million people in 2025) and destruction we cause behind the wheel.

Does anyone actually have the perfect AV right now? No. But they will figure it out.

Edit: clarity, but also dont forget taxi drivers who scam people by taking longer routes, ive also had my share of having to call them out at times when they think im a tourist.

A full minute of processing power and the best it could come up with was crashing through a divider and ending up in the far lane

I'm honestly surprised that a Tesla Model Y fit in this gap. Maybe it ran over the first bollard a bit?

Edit: And, IDK, "managed to get out appropriately" in this case would unfortunately mean throwing it in reverse and doubling back through the cross-walk, I think. It's never a good idea to run stuff over to get where you're going.

Getting out appropriately would have been reversing to the place where it entered the flex-posted area, not simply smashing through them.

I wonder if it might also include outdated maps and this is newer infrastructure?

Still not an excuse, it should have seen it and not crossed the white line, but maybe it had conflicting info and chose wrong?