Prism0%
Plans to bring Waymo to Washington, D.C., worry ride-share drivers 13%
By Eddie Velazquez0%
7/30/2026, 9:34:30 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Framing Effect, and Pessimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 13.8% saturation with 133 hits. Analysis detected 596 faulty-reasoning hits from 964 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.5% and a BS Rank of 13% (19,665 of 22,405 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 87.80% of the article peer group.
Municipal lawmakers in Washington, D.C., want to bring autonomous vehicle services to the nation’s capital, a move that ride-share drivers and other workers say would significantly inhibit their ability to provide for their families during troubling economic times.
City Council is considering a bill that would allow companies such as Waymo , which operates a self-driving taxi service in 11 U.S.cities and is testing package deliveries on autonomous vehicles, to operate in Washington, D.C.
Councilmember Charles Allen, who represents Ward 6 and chairs the council’s committee on transportation and the environment, said at a July 13 hearing that part of his impetus for bringing the bill forward and establishing regulations on autonomous vehicles is public safety.
For Allen, autonomous vehicles represent a watershed moment for transportation.
Their expansion in transportation, he said, is a fait accompli.
“I don’t think it is a question of [whether autonomous vehicles] are coming.
It is when, under what conditions, and how they would work for our local roadways and our local economy,” Allen said.
“Many human drivers cannot safely operate a motor vehicle.
If there is a new transportation option that can save lives and prevent injuries, then we owe it to our residents to explore that option fully and with an open mind.”
According to experts, there is no consensus on whether autonomous vehicles are safer than humans driving; early data suggests that the rate of crashes is far lower, but autonomous vehicles also represent a very small sample of all cars on the road, and the risk of accidents at dawn and dusk could actually be greater in autonomous vehicles.
Allen’s bill requires autonomous vehicle ride-share services to provide equal coverage to every neighborhood, clarifies legal liability for crashes and malfunctions, ensures first responders receive guidance from operators on how to safely respond to crashes involving an autonomous vehicle, ensures services can continue to operate during a power outage, and directs city agencies to produce reports on traffic safety and worker displacement.
Unions representing UPS drivers, as well as thousands of workers in other industries who rely on ride-share driving for supplemental income—such as cleaners and security workers for commercial buildings and airport workers—have pushed back against the measure, which could be up for a vote this fall after city councilmembers return from a two-month recess.
Allen did not respond to questions about workers’ concerns regarding the bill.
“All sorts of jobs would be affected,” said Bill Davis, the president of the Teamsters Local 639, which represents UPS drivers in the Washington, D.C., area.
“We’ve asked the D.C. government to make sure this bill does not affect workers negatively.
The bill is very broad, and we are opposed to it.”
Davis and several workers represented by Local 639, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ, and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, testified at a council committee hearing for the bill that lasted about 10 hours.
Davis told Prism that the arrival and proliferation of autonomous vehicles could result in reduced hours or the outright elimination of jobs for a couple thousand workers, including the 1,500 UPS delivery drivers in Washington.
“Less hours, no work,” Demani Petron-King, a UPS worker who also spoke at the hearing, told Prism.
“The volume is already diminishing as we speak on a day-to-day basis now, just because of the economy and just the state of the country.”
Petron-King has been working at UPS for almost 20 years.
“I can’t imagine another hit that’s going to be detrimental to all of our careers,” he said.
Workers who rely on ride-share services say they are worried about their ability to continue providing for their families.
Helen Raynor, an SEIU 32BJ member who works security at commercial buildings in Washington, D.C., said she supplements her income by driving Uber and Lyft whenever her family of five has needs outside of their planned monthly budget.
“If there’s not enough food in the house, I’ll drive for that purpose,” she said.
Gridwise Analytics, a firm that collects data on ride-share services and other gig economy companies, projects that by 2041 autonomous vehicle taxis will overtake human-driven ride-share workers.
Gridwise’s 2026 report on the effects of Uber and Lyft in cities that have adopted autonomous vehicle ride-share services shows that in Los Angeles, for instance, Uber and Lyft trips have fallen by 9.7% from the end of 2024 to the end of 2025, compared to 2.6% nationally.
Hourly-based pay has also dropped since 2024 in LA, Austin, and San Francisco, according to the report.
The potential loss of hours for full-time ride-share workers in the nation’s capital, even at a slow pace, would affect drivers like Raynor, who drives about 20 hours per week when necessary, she said.
Ride-share apps have systems that reward consistent driving, placing drivers in tiers, Raynor said.
Drivers in the highest tiers are prioritized when the app selects rides.
“To me that would be even less opportunity,” she said.
“With less demand, then what do you think will happen if that trickle down means less pickups?”
The Washington, D.C., bill establishes some guardrails for potentially displaced workers, including directing the district’s Department of Employment Services and the Department of For-Hire Vehicles to outline the workforce impact and recommendations to help workers facing displacement.
Additionally, the bill diverts some of the autonomous vehicle revenue paid to Washington to create a fund supporting taxi and ride-share drivers through vocational training and other workforce development programs.
For Petron-King, the prospect of re-entering a competitive job market is unthinkable.
“Imagine 19 years ago, I looked for a job,” he said.
“This is a completely different time.
I would not even know where to begin.”
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor
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