Robotaxis Are Ready; New York City Isnât The author, who saw the rise of driverless cars firsthand in Fog City, San Francisco, says not so fast, Big Apple. During my last two years of high school in San Francisco, driverless carsâor ârobotaxis,â or autonomous vehicles, call them what you willâwerenât the future. They were a joke. Waymo cars circled blocks aimlessly, teenagers jumped in front of them just to see what would happen, and every now and then one would end up awkwardly nudging onto a sidewalk. It didnât feel revolutionary. It felt like a glitch, an experiment that had escaped the lab too early. No one I knew took them seriously, let alone imagined they would ever function in the real world. Then I left for college in New York City. When I came back to San Francisco for Thanksgiving break, something had shifted. The same cars that once felt like a joke had quietly become normal. I realized this just after midnight, when my 14-year-old sister walked in after me from a party. I asked how she got home, whether a friend dropped her off, or if she took the bus. When she said neither, I warned her about taking Ubers alone that late. âHuh?â she said. âCars donât, like, have drivers anymore.â And then she went to bed. The next day, I decided to try one myself. Using her app, I ordered a ride, half expecting something to go wrong. When the car showed up, it didnât feel broken anymore. It felt deliberate, almost like it had something to prove. I sat in the front seat as the steering wheel turned on its own, casually, confidently. I kept glancing beside me, instinctively expecting a person to be there. There wasnât. The ride was smooth, but unsettling. The