Autonomous vehicles in LA bring out protesters concerned with safety and job loss

Protestors gathered outside Google's Venice headquarters Tuesday morning to denounce autonomous vehicles, chanting and carrying signs that read, "no drivers, no peace," and "Waymo? Hell No!"

Teamsters, labor leaders and allies who attended Tuesday's rally contend that self-driving cars aren't safe and eliminating drivers eliminates jobs.

Waymo One's robotaxi service publicly launched in the Los Angeles area in October, and Tuesday's protest coincides with the release of a Q3 2023 earnings report by Alphabet, Inc., the owner of Waymo and parent company of Google.

"No one's against progress, but if you're going to eliminate jobs, you need to make sure there are jobs for people to go to – that just makes common sense," Teamster Western Region Vice President Lindsay Dougherty said at Tuesday's rally.

"Homelessness is a huge issue here in Los Angeles, and you're going to tell me you're going to get rid of jobs and not have an answer or strategy behind that? Their strategy is to make profit over the people that have elected them, and it's really that simple," Dougherty said.

Waymo introduced its 24/7 robotaxi service in Santa Monica on Oct. 11., where passengers were able to ride for free during the promotion period. Waymo already had autonomous driving services underway in San Francisco and Phoenix.

The company began mapping Los Angeles with human drivers in 2019 and last year in Santa Monica, it was testing self-driving vehicles with safety drivers, human back-ups on board. The program had been tested in Phoenix for three years and officially launched in 2020 in that city.

And while safety remains a concern, there isn't a lot of data on self-driving cars yet. The California DMV reports that as of Oct. 13, it has received more than 600 autonomous vehicle collision reports.

Arstechnica.com reported that in a recent examination of collision reports, most were low-speed and appeared to be the fault of the other driver.

Waymo officials argue that many human-driven vehicle accidents are the result of distracted driving, and they say that's just not an issue for robotaxis.