When I first saw this headline from Streetsblog — I Tried to Hate-Ride a Waymo. Turns Out, I Loved It — I was prepared to hate-read it. Normally I wouldn’t bother hate-reading something, but despite my initial reaction to the headline, I do trust Streetsblog, so I thought I’d try to set aside my preconceptions and see what this was about. Then I checked the byline and I saw it was written by Anna Zivarts (bylines in my RSS reader are not as salient as they are on the Streetsblog website), whom I trust to be thoughtful and grounded, and I wasn’t disappointed.

But instead of unequivocally hating it, I experienced an unexpected sense of freedom. As the Waymo approached the first stop light, I realized what it felt like to be in a car by myself. For the first time, there was no need to explain what I was doing or where I was going to another human being. And that was profound.

I don’t think the point she’s trying to make here is that “autonomous” vehicles are Good Actually, I think what she’s calling attention to is that there is a real improvement over typical ride-hailing services. Those of us who can drive may take for granted the experience of being alone in a car. If we’re having a bad day, we can steam or ugly-cry; if we’re tired we can just space out. We don’t have to make conversation, or mask a bad mood, or sit in an awkward silence. Being alone in a car is (fairly) private — I’ve even known people to go out and sit in their car for some privacy.

Rather than being a defense of “autonomous” vehicles, I think this is a warning. She goes on to discuss how ride-hailing seemed, at first, to be a boon for people who couldn’t drive — until the companies stopped subsidizing the cost of rides, and now many members of the blind community can’t afford to use these services. She calls attention to the dangers of driver-less vehicles to pedestrians and cyclists. And of course, if driving becomes more convenient, and accessible to more people we will be tempted to spread out even more, increasing vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and all of the externalities (pollution, noise, hardscape, crashes) that accompany an increase of VMT.

Autonomous vehicles will result in more cars on the road. If we don’t want to spend more of our lives inside them — and if we don’t want to deal with all the externalized public health and climate impacts of driving — then we must ask if autonomous vehicles move us closer or further from the kinds of communities we want to live in.

So I do think this is a warning to beware the siren song of “autonomous” vehicles. It’s important to recognize that these services do offer something that non-drivers lack: a little more privacy. And while, yes, you may not want to ugly-cry on the bus if you can help it, you also aren’t expected to perform for anyone else on public transit beyond some basic level of courtesy.

Anyway, the article — despite the click-bait title — definitely worth reading. And if you aren’t already familiar with Anna Zivarts, I can also recommend her book, When Driving Is Not an Option.