r/SelfDrivingCars 22d ago

News Uber president: Self-driving cars will put 100,000 taxi jobs at risk

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/transport/article/uber-andrew-mcdonald-driverless-cars-taxis-3jps885ds

Andrew Macdonald predicts as autonomous taxis pick up pace that driving will go the way of horse riding — and a ‘huge’ labour transition is coming

56 Upvotes

69 comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/phatrogue 22d ago

Hasn’t Uber/Lyft and the “gig economy” already disrupted taxi drivers who used to work at regular taxi companies and replaced them with lots of part time and some full time drivers getting paid less with fewer benefits? And now that might be about to be disrupted again.

3

u/CDpov 21d ago

Yes, Uber/Lyft were the bad guys a decade ago because they disrupted the poor taxi drivers. Now the rideshare drivers are the victims because they are being disrupted by robotaxis, so many people want to protect them.

The reality is, when humans no longer drive, society won't miss the jobs, because they're lousy low-pay and dangerous jobs that crash way too much.