I think caution is good here. We all saw what reckless admin + Uber did before they shut it down for good.

The permit gets them into the process for eventually deploying without safety drivers. That includes safety plans, emergency responder plans and training, and periodic reporting.

They could just drive cars around like Tesla, but that wouldn't put them on a path to a fully autonomous service.

It's not insane for cities to permit autonomous vehicle technology. They permit almost every other type of heavy machinery. Even manually driven cars are permitted! (Driver's license test, registration fees, etc.)

> already fully automated in SF

I don't thin it's fair to say they are fully automated. There's a large remote operations team for remote assistance to help them get out of tricky situations. The cars can be nudged to perform certain actions.

New York is a long way behind California in regulating autonomous vehicles. Fully driverless vehicles are also illegal there and it will require legislation for Waymo to deploy in the state.

I didn't say testing was stupid. I said permitting only 8 vehicles for human testing from the leader in self-driving cars, years after they've been fully autonomous in other dense cities, isn't the flex he thinks it is.

Would you like to rephrase what you said then? As written, it’s hard to come to any conclusion other than that you could stand to gain some respect for the long road of research and progress needed to achieve fully autonomous driving fleet. 8 is bigger than 0, and approving any non-zero number is recognizing the value of technology.

8 is probably Waymo's choice. It's not said anywhere that it's the permit limit.

There's gonna be people driving them? What's the point then?

Sounds like it's a person actively monitoring but not driving. The point is minimizing risk until safety can be proven.