Robotaxis could be coming to Boston. At least, that’s the hope of Waymo, a subsidiary of the parent company of Google, which has been testing autonomous vehicles locally. But for some local politicians and labor unions, it’s an over-my-dead-body situation. Driverless cars could be the harbinger of a new era of road safety, but some say they could also be a job killer. To understand more behind the controversy, GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz spoke with PJ Vogt, host of the podcast Search Engine, which recently published a two-part story on the technology: On the history of driverless cars and one on the praise and pushback they’re facing here in the Commonwealth. What follows is a lightly edited transcript. Mark Herz: Let’s start with a recent poll that showed almost three in four voters in Massachusetts oppose driverless vehicles here, and said that safety concerns and job losses are top issues. You certainly heard about that even before the poll came out when you came up to cover a couple of Boston City Council hearings. So tell us about it. PJ Vogt: As you said, there were two hearings, about four hours each. And really, the predominant sort of thrust of the conversation was concern about job loss. I think that is where the people who are worried about this technology have a real point. There’s something like 75,000 rideshare drivers, mainly Uber and Lyft, in Boston. In a world where cheap, freely available, driverless cars are everywhere, it’s really hard to imagine that those workers have job security. So they’re concerned. You also have concern from other labor union members who drive for a living, such as delivery drivers, ambulance drivers, who think if autonomous vehicles come for these jobs, it might not be very long before they