Driverless vehicles on Long Island: Hochul proposal would expand automated cars outside NYC

Driverless vehicles are already ferrying passengers around San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and cities around the world, from China to the Middle East. Under a new proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul, they could come to parts of New York, including Long Island.

Proponents argue automated vehicles would ease commutes on local streets and highways while reducing traffic injuries and deaths caused by human error and impaired driving. But skeptics argue more safety data is needed; they fear the vehicles could worsen congestion and threaten jobs in a transportation sector that employs 50,000 people on the Island.

The driverless car company Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent, Alphabet, already obtained a permit to test eight vehicles in Manhattan and Brooklyn last year, albeit with safety drivers and no passengers aboard.

But new legislation in the governor’s executive budget, released this month, would go further. It would allow the Department of Motor Vehicles to immediately begin approving tests on local roads outside of New York City, and after a year, to approve the deployment of networks of autonomous taxis for paying customers.

Companies would have to pay a $1 million application fee, have a $5 million insurance policy and demonstrate their vehicles can operate safely. They would also have to show support from "local stakeholders" in the counties or municipalities where they seek to operate. Other details, like how many vehicles could be deployed, would be left up to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Michael Martino, a spokesman for Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine, said in a statement that "more information would be required" before deciding whether to support a pilot program locally.

Christopher Boyle, a spokesman for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who is running for governor against Hochul, did not respond to a request for comment about the proposal.

Self-driving cars are not yet available for sale to private individuals in the United States, and the legislation, which would sunset in 2028, only proposes their use as for-hire vehicles, for now.

"This program will make our roads safer and will improve mobility options for communities outside of New York City," Hochul said in a statement.

Waymo, which spent over a half-million dollars lobbying in the state last year, praised the governor's plan.

"We’re ready to work with leaders around the state to make this future a reality," said Justin Kintz, the company's head of global public policy, in a statement.

Waymo did not answer Newsday's inquiries about whether it would seek to begin testing first in Long Island, Westchester, or in upstate cities like Buffalo and Albany.

Some experts reacted with skepticism.

Former New York City Traffic Commissioner Sam Schwartz said he's not convinced autonomous vehicles are safer than humans yet, and called for independent testing.

"I'd love for the State of New York to say, ‘Hey, we want an independent study before we're going to accept you on our roads,’ " said Schwartz, who teaches at Hunter College in Manhattan.

Bhairavi Desai, executive director of New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which also represents Uber and Lyft drivers in the city, said the technology has the potential to upend livelihoods.

"The governor may say this is just a small pilot [program], but it's a small pilot with tremendous consequences into the future," she said.

Waymo, Zoox and Tesla major players

Zoox, owned by Amazon, recently began offering free rides in futuristic-looking driverless trolleylike vans in San Francisco and the Las Vegas Strip.

Tesla’s Robotaxi has not begun offering fully driverless rides, but said it plans to do so in select locations this year. Its Autopilot and "full self driving" features already allow Tesla owners to experience autonomous steering while behind the wheel, but they are required to remain attentive — monitored by cameras and sensors — and be able to take over in case of emergency. 

But by far the largest player in the U.S. industry is currently Waymo, with a fleet of several thousand autonomous Jaguar and Chrysler SUVs — outfitted with cameras, lasers and radar systems — on local streets and freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, Texas, and Atlanta.

The company spent around $600,000 lobbying state and municipal officials in New York last year. It currently has agreements for spending over $60,000 per month on lobbying, according to registrations with the state ethics commission.

Sean Butler, a spokesman for the governor, said it's too soon to say whether autonomous vehicles would be only allowed on local streets or if they could also use highways in New York, as they have begun doing in some other states.

Questions about safety, livelihoods and more

Proponents have argued that autonomous vehicles, if deployed at scale, could make driving safer. Crashes claimed nearly 40,000 lives nationwide in 2024; on Long Island, they killed 2,100 people and injured over 16,000 during the decade ending in 2023, Newsday has reported.

As of September, Waymo’s driverless vehicles had experienced 40 airbag-deployment crashes and just three "serious injury or worse" crashes. That's about five times fewer and 10 times fewer, respectively, than an average human driver operating over the same distance in the same cities, according to the company. It has made some of its safety data public on its website, but it does not list who was at fault and did not respond to Newsday's requests for more details about noninjury crashes.

Schwartz said he doesn’t think Waymo has driven enough total miles yet to draw solid conclusions. Though there hasn't been a reported death in any Waymo crash, its vehicles have only recently surpassed the cumulative mileage in which a fatality would be expected among human drivers. Moreover, Schwartz thinks safety data should be gathered independently, rather than relying on self-certified company data as federal and other states' regulators currently do.

Waymo also recently came under scrutiny in San Francisco when its vehicles ground to a halt as traffic signals went dark during a power outage, snarling traffic.

While Waymos and Zoox use combinations of cameras, lasers and radar to guide vehicles, Teslas rely only on cameras — a cheaper technology.

As of July last year, Tesla had settled lawsuits for at least four deadly crashes involving Autopilot, according to the AP. In October, federal investigators launched an investigation into crashes involving Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature and another into Waymo for passing a stopped school bus.

So far, Waymo rides generally cost significantly more than taxis or ride-shares in the cities where they operate, but autonomous vehicles could eventually undercut human drivers.

Over 50,000 Long Islanders work in transportation, according to data from the census bureau.

Butler, the spokesman, said Hochul "will always stand with workers and has no interest in advancing policies that put hardworking New Yorkers’ jobs at risk. Autonomous vehicle pilots are underway in many states, and this proposal is a limited, safety-focused way to test new technology."

But Desai, from the taxi alliance, said she sees potential parallels with the expansion of Uber and Lyft into the city more than a decade ago, which led to crushing medallion debt and suicides among taxicab drivers. 

"Autonomous vehicles are a fantasy for trillionaires that will cost hundreds of thousands of working-class families their primary livelihood. And the governor has a responsibility to create jobs, not destroy them," she said.

In his 2018 book, "No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future," Schwartz writes that historically, transportation technologies from the automobile to EZ pass have led to new professions and economic growth in the long term, but also painful job losses.

He told Newsday that because autonomous vehicles can roam streets continuously between charges, they could worsen traffic congestion in New York. He also worries what impact they will have on public transportation.

Tighter oversight and regulation are needed "now," he said, "before these industries get so big and they block any kind of legislation."