Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

This is great long term for having cars that follow traffic laws since human drivers in NYC are awful (kill/injure pedestrians, bikers, and other street users all the time).

Not so great for getting cars out of NYC and pedestrianizing more of the city/moving towards more “low traffic neighborhoods” as I imagine Waymo and other similar companies are going to fight against these efforts.

Edit: Lots of people talking about human drivers taking advantage of self-driving cars being more cautious/timid. Good news is that once you have enough self-driving cars on the road, it probably slows down/calms other traffic (see related research on speed governors).

> pedestrianizing more of the city

Replacing dangerous, dirty, noisy cars with safe, clean, and quiet ones seems like a huge pedestrianizing step.

What's a "low traffic neighborhood"? Does that allow busses or deliveries?

It’s a step in the right direction, but they still pollute (heavy electric vehicles have a lot more tire dust) and take up a lot space (could close roads and build housing or just have more space for the millions of city residents that don’t have/use cars).

LTN still allow buses, emergency vehicles, deliveries, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Traffic_Neighbourhood

> heavy electric vehicles have a lot more tire dust

It would be interesting to know the fleet-level statistics for this. Driven by humans, EV might wear tires faster because of fast starts and the extra weight during stops. It's possible that the Waymo Driver accelerates and decelerates more smoothly, resulting in less tire wear than a human-driven ICE vehicle.