I was mayor when self-driving cars came to Austin. Here’s what New York should know.
A Waymo drives across in front of the Capitol Building in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 23, 2025. Sara Diggins/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images
COMMENTARY | The key question is whether autonomous vehicle companies view government as a partner or an enemy.
Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced a proposal to bring autonomous vehicles to communities across New York. I served as the mayor of Austin, Texas, when our city became the Kitty Hawk of driverless cars ten years ago. Since leaving office, I am constantly asked how to protect the public interest when disruptive technology hits the streets. Those questions grow more urgent every time an autonomous vehicle makes headlines for the wrong reasons, as they did last week.
My answer is simple: The outcome depends less on the technology itself than whether the companies behind it view government as a partner or an enemy. To understand what’s coming to New York, let me tell you the story of two companies.
In 2015, we welcomed Google’s self-driving cars to Austin. I wanted the jobs and energy that came with being a welcoming city for new technology, but I also had to keep residents safe. These were untested vehicles sharing roads with cyclists, pedestrians and schoolchildren.
Google treated the city as a partner in an experiment, not an obstacle to be overcome. They were transparent and shared data. They coordinated with police. They understood that the trust of Austin residents mattered to their success, and when we raised concerns about specific intersections or scenarios, their engineers made adjustments. The city learned from working with Google how best to regulate in a time of innovation and new economies.
Our biggest “problem”? Our local transportation reporter discovered he could confuse the cars at stop signs by inching forward, stopping and inching again – playing a game of "you go, no you go." His column taught the whole city the trick.
We tried to offer the same collaborative partnership to Uber and Lyft, but the response was different.
In 2015, news broke about sexual assaults by rideshare drivers, leading residents to demand that the City Council make rides safer. We didn’t default to old practices of regulation. We asked the companies to have fingerprinted drivers – the standard best practice for verifying identity. We offered to subsidize the costs and to qualify the drivers. We even offered to write the code for a feature letting passengers choose screened drivers, allowing the market, not the city, to decide if this kind of safety mattered.
Instead, the companies refused every overture, even ones that required no changes to their platforms. When the City Council stood firm on safety, the companies spent millions on a ballot measure to defeat our efforts. Austin voters rejected it decisively. At this point, rather than working constructively with the city, Uber and Lyft successfully lobbied the Texas state Legislature to preempt our local authority.
The consequences were predictable: rider safety became a defining liability for Uber and Lyft. By rejecting the safety tools we proposed, they invited a reputational crisis that led to regulatory backlash in cities across the country and years of damaging headlines.
Hochul’s proposal would allow autonomous vehicles in upstate New York, while excluding New York City for now. It’s a reasoned approach, because it’s an opportunity to test both the technology and the corporate citizenship of the companies deploying it.
The companies operating upstate will eventually want full access to the five boroughs. Constructive partnership should be the price of entry. If they share data, work with local officials, help solve problems collaboratively in Buffalo and Albany and build a track record in New York state that shows that safety is a top priority, then the conversation can turn to expansion into New York City.
If they refuse to recognize the responsibilities of government – and threaten to leave if they don't get their way – New York should call their bluff.
Austin showed that government and tech can both benefit from working together. New York and autonomous vehicle companies have a chance to get this right, but only if both sides are willing to act as true partners.
Steve Adler is the former mayor of Austin, Texas, and is a partner at Commonweal Ventures.