Mamdani's Waymo Ban Is the Wrong Way to Regulate Robotaxis

A few years ago, I sat around with friends debating when human-driven cars would no longer be allowed on the island of Manhattan. Not whether autonomous vehicles would take over. Instead, it’s autonomous vehicles that have been effectively banned from the island of Manhattan.

There are two ways to kill a technology. Politicians can regulate it to death or industry can fight regulation so hard that when something goes wrong, the backlash buries the technology entirely. New York is embracing the first approach. The autonomous vehicle industry should be just as worried about the second.