And the results are so stark that even if there were problems with data collection that substantially altered the results (and maybe there are!), the point would still stand. I would still write this article if serious accidents were 20 percent less likely instead of 94 percent less likely.
Yeah, this is a case where, even if the benefits are overstated, the results are so stark that the other side has one hell of an uphill battle if they want to show people they're right.
I am fascinated by how the anti-smoking crusade has morphed into anti-vaping. I haven't smoked in decades (being old and having survived the 60s Mad Men era) and have never vaped. But as I understand it, vaping is just consuming possibly helpful and non-dangerous nicotine in a water vapor. None of the tars and other cancer-causing elements. But somehow, just because vaping looks kinda like smoking, it must be shamed and banned. I hear one argument against vaping may be that it is a "slippery slope" to smoking (reefer madness!) . . . however, it seems more likely a stepping stone away from smoking for many. But the arguments against vaping, as with autonomous cars, have nothing to do with rationality.
Nicotine Addiction: Most vapes deliver high amounts of nicotine, which is addictive, raises heart rate and blood pressure, and harms brain development in people under 25.
Lung Damage: Inhaled vapors can cause airway inflammation, worsen asthma, and increase the risk of chronic bronchitis and COPD.
Toxic Chemicals: Vaping exposes the body to harmful substances like formaldehyde, acrolein, and heavy metals such as nickel and lead from the heating coils.
If the question is, is nicotine vaping a good hobby for smoking naive teens to take up, the answer is unequivocally "no". If the question is, is nicotine vaping a safe and effective method of smoking cessation for cigarette smokers, the answer is unequivocally "yes." Preferring to talk about question 1 doesn't change the answer to question 2.
Except the person above who this poster was replying to is clearly treating vaping as just generally fine and anti-vaping rhetoric as a sort of hysterical overflow of anti-smoking rhetoric.
Vaping does seem to be not as bad as smoking tobacco, so if used to replace cigarettes, it's a step in the right direction, but my impression is that the vast majority of young people who vape aren't using it to get off a tobacco habit. They take up vaping because it's easier and cheaper than cigarettes and feels relatively harmless, even though it isn't.
The vaping companies seem to agree too. Vaping is not marketed as a boring old way to get off cigarettes like nicotine patches are, it's marketed to appeal to new customers who have never smoked before, and it's hard to imagine that once you've picked up the addiction, you're not going to be more open to getting a fix the old fashioned way too if the circumstances are right.
I can hear the future lawyers now... "Did you consume vapes between 2000 and 2030 and get six kinds of cancer? You may be entitled to compensation...." And the consumers will be like "but random substack poster Ted Swing assured me it was unequivocally a safe and effective method of smoking cessation."
You keep conflating the question of are e-cigarettes harmful (they are) with the question of are e-cigarettes lower risk than smoking cigarettes (the evidence suggests that they are). If you are interested in the truth, I would encourage you to look at Levett et al. (2023), Lee and Farsalinos (2025), and Andrew and Zhao (2025).
Oh hush. It's not fair to bring up "data" and "evidence" when someone like "Former Dem" is trying very hard to brag about being a highly skilled arsehole.
In other words, you Googled "vaping" and then copy-pasted what the Google AI thing said. This is not convincing.
"Health Risks: [it's not good for you and might make your asthma worse, if you have asthma already}"
Wow, that sounds so scary and dangerous next to smoking cigarettes, which contain tar, formaldehyde (which you mentioned), arsenic, and trace elements of cyanide. Thank god people are still smoking cigarettes, rather than those evil vapes that contain nickel and stuff! They don't even kill you from lung cancer when you're 45! Weaksauce!
Serious question: why are you so annoyed at other people's attempts to survive addiction without dying?
For the record, the nicotine is dissolved not in water but in propylene glycol (PG) and/or glycerol, but those are also non-toxic (see note) and have been used in a wide range of applications for decades, including ones involving ingestion and non-vaping inhalation by humans, despite the people that just assume “and youre putting god-knows-what newfangled chemicals in your lungs!”
But yes, a knee-jerk anti-vaping reaction can come down to an immediate (and subconscious) feeling that “it looks like smoke so is basically smoke”. One minor thing I’ve also noticed is many people are under the impression that nicotine itself is a carcinogen or otherwise toxic.
HOWEVER! If we go to a more conscious level of motivation, I really think many people are just fundamentally repulsed by the idea of “cheating” your way into better health outcomes, and this shows up in other areas too. It just seems wrong, on a moral level, for someone to escape an unhealthy situation or bad habit (ex. smoking or obesity) without serious toil, without feeling the mental and physical pain (ex. withdrawal or diet/exercise), and simply taking a novel, easier, and effective shortcut (ex. vaping or GLP-1). You have to pay a toll.
They don’t think it “counts”. At the very least, that it *should not* count. And this too, I think is subconsciously converted into an intellectual outlet of “alright, surely it’s all a big lie anyway. There *must* be toxins just as bad in the e-juice, we just have to find it. There *must* be quack researchers getting paid off by big pharma to lie about GLP-1’s benefits/safety, and we just have to find proof.” Not all who make that argument have the “you must suffer” compulsion, but all who have the compulsion try to express it via material reasoning.
I think this is very culturally informed too. I wouldn’t be surprised if this angle was much less prevalent in, say, East Asia, compared to here in the US or other places with similar religious backgrounds (despite our collapsed religiosity).
(NOTE: anyone that’s about to hit me with a “so you think im just a fundamentalist for not liking vaping?” or “so you think im Chinese for liking vaping?” or “so you think drinking a bottle of PG is non-toxic?” or “so you think babies should get GLP-jabbed?”, fuck off with the force of 9001 suns)
And vaping also doesn’t create secondhand smoke that could hurt other people. (Unless you consider their fruity, cotton-candy smell to be harmful, I guess.) I really don’t get the shaming of vaping. It seems like a good way to help people replace a harmful habit with a relatively benign one.
>It seems like a good way to help people replace a harmful habit with a relatively benign one.
My main objection is that is seems like it encourages _new_ users much more than replacing smoking from existing tobacco users. I have no objection to some 40 year old switching from a pack a day, to vaping. I am concerned with 18-year olds picking up vaping because it is both cool and "safe."
To be fair, I oppose vaping because it smells bad, just like smoking anything does. I don't care if people want to smoke outside away from others, in clubs that specifically allow it, or in the privacy of their own homes, but I do not like people pulling out vape pens in any place where smoking bans exist. It's gross!
Public health used to be all about meeting people where they are. At some point in the past 10-15 years, it took a weird turn where in some cases such as drug users, they're still meeting people where they are and even scolding other people for complaining about the externalities (apparently we're not supposed to be upset about people smoking meth on the train) of people's chosen behaviors, while becoming incredibly moralistic about other behaviors like using nicotine. I suspect it has to do with how the populations are viewed in the progressive universe. Users of meth or fentanyl are seen as marginalized and victims of capitalism. Most nicotine users are employed (some are even biohackers) and are seen as less worthy of being met where they are.
I think you might be noticing a double standard that arises as a natural side effect of modern doctrines such as Intersectionality, which tend to provide a theoretical underpinning for double standards by stipulating that individuals face varying degrees of difficulty and therefore require differing degrees of accommodation.
Although "double standards" is a bit of a misnomer because in reality it's more of a multidimensional matrix of standards that require differential equations to properly weight. The important thing to remember is that the new morality arises not from treating everyone the same, but from treating everyone differently, depending.
It means you can scold the same privileged person both for vaping nicotine and for not voting to fully fund needle exchanges.
One can put on their tinfoil hat and question to what extent the tobacco industry is on board with that crusade in order to sink a competing product. After all, if vaping were banned or heavily regulated, you'd suddenly have a near monopoly on nicotine addicts.
Also, there are health effects of vaping and the extent is probably not yet fully known because it's a newer technology. That said, most of the horror stories are from dumb teenagers who just started taking thousands of puffs a day rather than exercise any moderation.
Sure because no one is making money from the vaping industry, it's definitely not growing by 30% year over year with huge profit margins, and surely if they tell us it's harmless it is.
I never said vaping was harmless. In fact, my post quite literally says "there are health effects of vaping." Nor did I say that people don't financially benefit from it. None of that really refutes that I was saying.
One wonders how many of the outlets and people pushing this line of thought are the same people who, back in the early 2020s, also pushed the line that taking any kind of factor other than "lives immediately saved" into account when dealing with COVID meant that you hated Grandma, the immunocompromised, and puppies.
Yes because a two year long global lockdown that destroyed untold numbers of local businesses and kept kids out of school for the most formative years of their lives was a way bigger deal than…uh…less uber drivers? Did you really need someone to point this out to you? Is this the limit of your galaxy-brained perception?
Like can any of yall actually make a freakin point and say outright what you think you’re trying to say? A bunch of idiots standing around scratching their heads going “hhmmmMmmMmmmMmmM mighty suspicious don’t you think????” Is not the intellectual mega-slam-dunk that you all seem to think it is.
Yes we get it, corporations bad, data evil, scientists corrupted, CIA psyop. But you say that in response to literally everything. Do you have anything else to say? Is there a part two? Or does your curiosity just stop at your George Carlin impression?
My point was that the people pushing the "Waymo is bad because of job losses even if it saves lives" seem to have some overlap with the "hard lockdowns forever!" crowd.
I will admit that I haven’t done a deep dive on other sources of data, but I feel like we can’t have a belly laugh over the tobacco companies telling us how safe their product is and then just accept that the official Waymo blog is perhaps, just possibly, taking a more rosy view of their product. This is, after all, the company that can’t figure out why their cars are blowing past stopped school buses with flashing lights and extended stop arms. (https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY26FH007.aspx)
Waymo has work to do in that arena for sure, but human drivers blow past school buses with alarming frequency. When the worst happens, there is no big corporation to sue, either, just ruined lives in many families. And insurance rates that are levied on individuals and that continually rise. Personally, dropping car maintenance and insurance from my budget would be a relief.
I'm not a Waymo fangirl at all. I'm purely Waymo curious. I do think a Waymo type future is inevitable. I don't think we are there yet.
Agreed, but most busses now have cameras that catch these drivers and, at least here, the sheriff dept hunts them down and the fines are significant. My argument, though, is that we have no idea how safe these vehicles are at this point because the data has all been self collected. Jeff’s thesis is “unions would rather you die” and is based on self collected data in a few environments and situations.
I’m also not some Luddite. I’ve worked in tech for 40 years and still believe that it is, overall, a benefit. But these companies always exaggerate the benefits and massively downplay the costs of their products.
Heh yes, as an ex-HP employee, I agree companies downplay the risks and do not assess all the tradeoffs of new technology.
I live in a town with notoriously bad drivers, so I am sure that other municipalities deal with bad drivers in a much more efficient way. We just recently had a repeat drunk driving offender kill a family of four not far from where I live, so I am very sensitive to the topic of "people drive better than automated systems" right now.
Accident data seems like one place where we might trust the data more? Especially if you have third party collection of the data from insurance claims and police reports. My concerns would be more with playing games with the methodology rather than raw data - which should be something validatable.
I have had too many sketchy Uber and Lyft drivers to feel comfortable outsourcing all my driving to them, unfortunately. It's an option if I am traveling with someone, but I don't do it alone, and definitely don't Uber at night alone. So it's a solution, but a partial one.
Yeah man, you can never trust those corporate scientists. Clearly all their data is completely fabricated and in such an obvious way that nobody has been able to make any serious counter arguments except to point to a sign that says “CORPORATIONS!”
Why is it there’s always some faux-wise idiot around to point out that hey, guys, I know that SpaceX SAYS that Mars exists, but have you considered that it’s all corporate lies????
How do you even go through life? Are you suspicious every time you open your fridge that it might be 1,000 degrees inside? Sure it was designed to keep things cold, but by AN CORPORATIONS!”
If your only argument is “but like, incentives or something because corporation” then you literally have no argument except a meek appeal to what you think passes for prudent skepticism. The next step is to then point out what those big misses and bad data actually are, not just stop at pointing out an obvious but pointless fact. But there’s never a next step. If your skepticism never leads to any tangible point then all you’re doing is making noise.
Great post but you lost me at your Cocaine-a-Cola point. We SHOULD bring that back! It WOULD increase productivity! Unwanted side effects like an increase in screenplays can be handled with a sin tax.
If someone hits you with the argument on Waymo should be banned because of the threat it eliminates jobs, respond with "so you're saying we shouldn't have Medicare for All because of the thousands of jobs it would eliminate in the insurance industry" and watch steam shoot out of their ears.
I have actually heard real people make that argument. I think it was part of the motivation for Joe Lieberman killing the public option, because insurance is such a big part of Connecticut's economy
Oh, it's definitely an argument against public healthcare. My point is it's just not one I'd expect any Waymo opponent to support so the logic of "things that eliminate jobs are inherently bad" fails right there.
Jeff’s comparison to tobacco is more accurate than some may think because of the invention of smartphones. Cars are safer than ever, easier to drive than ever, and yet people still crash their cars. I would guess a majority are due to avoidable human error, such as driving while drunk or tired, driving sober but you know you suck at it, or simply being an asshole who speeds through stop signs and thinks your destination is more important than others. However, so many idiots are on the road and staring down at their phones while going 10mph near pedestrians or 55mph on a freeway with a 65mph limit. I see it constantly near, in, and around NYC, an area where roads are so bad and interchanges are so complex it’s a wonder 40,000 don’t die per day. And when I lived in Los Angeles for a year in 2012, right after smartphones really took off, I witnessed 3 heads-down-at-phone rear end crashes. The third time it was 20-something female in Pasadena going 15-20 mph just smack into a car at light; I saw it coming for so many seconds I laughed as her airbag went off in her face.
So yes, people who died from smoking did it to themselves. Many people who crash and die from driving drunk, tired, or sending a f’ing text did it to themselves. And both smokers and crack-shot drivers took and still take other innocent lives along with them. So maybe we should give Waymo a shot and hopefully it ends up being less annoying e-sig smokers.
There's an additional argument against Waymo: Waymos are made by tech companies and tech companies are the most evil companies on earth because they pay annoying people who majored in STEM fields a lot of money and that's just plain wrong.
Speaking of tobacco and jobs, iirc when Joseph Califano was Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (as they used to call) and the anti-smoking movement was just taking off, he gave a speech in North Carolina in which he said something to the effect of “I have to watch myself, because I know that not only is your state the nation’s leading producer of tobacco, it is also the leading producer of bricks.”
I'm team Ban-Waymo. They serve no real purpose. If you can't or won't drive, take a cab or mass transit. Worrying about people who die in car accidents is the wrong statistic, unless the goal of team Yay-Waymo is to eliminate all driving by humans altogether. The question should be "how many people die annually in taxi accidents?" That number is 29, nationwide. To disrupt an entire industry and upend the livelihoods of 200,000 taxi drivers for such a low number is irrational.
It took decades to get from "elite businessmen have carphones" to "most people in African have mobile phones" but (for better and worse) it happened. Waymos in a few cities are early steps towards a world where 1.2 million road deaths drops to near 0, so yes, that's our goal.
If Waymos really are safer than most human drivers, why not eliminate most driving by humans altogether.
If people took a cab every time they didn't feel like driving the number of people who die in taxi accidents would be far higher. Part of the appeal of Waymo is that it is cheaper than taxis, so it will result in more people using it than have used taxis in the past, thereby reducing the amount of driving by humans and saving lives.
Also, if one of the 29 people dying in the taxi accidents was my child, I would personally tell all 200,000 taxi drivers to their faces to suck it up and get new jobs.
12,000 people die in the US die in stairwells every year. By your logic, that is 40,000% more important than taxi deaths. And yet I predict that you do not have 400 times the opinion that stairs should be swapped with ramps.
I actually own a split-level house partly so I never have to descend more than six stairs at once when I am at home. There's no need to take risks you don't have to.
If ramps were as cheap and easy to deploy as Waymos are, I would have 400x the opinion. But ramps take up far more space than stairs do, I would not be as gung-ho about Waymos if they were all the size of semi-trucks.
In other words, the policies that your advocate for don't really effect you, so you can advocate for them at no cost. But if some were to advocate for the burning down of all split level homes because statistics say that they are more dangerous than other types of housing, presumably you would oppose such an endeavor.
As a woman who has squirmed through advances by certain cab drivers, and knows others who have been straight up sexually assaulted, deaths are only part of the picture. Not being made to fear for your safety while taking a for-hire vehicle is also a major plus in my book.
There are also issues of cabbies not wanting to travel to certain areas arbitrarily or discriminating against certain riders - be it Black or blind.
I'm sorry you we're made uncomfortable. Those cabbies should be fired. Are you arguing that your discomfort equates to 199,000 other people losing their jobs along with the bad ones? Or are you arguing that all cabbies are closet rapists?
Yeah, a Waymo isn't going to tell me that the debit machine is down when I'm drunk and refuse to let me leave the vehicle in an attempt to force me to go to an ATM and scam me out of more money
I think I'm very much in the camp of a long-term goal to, yes, eliminate all driving by humans altogether.
I was talking to a friend of a friend who worked at Google (on the Glass team, so take that with a grain of salt since they weren't sending their best, folks) and one of the ideas she discussed was a future in which we essentially eliminated the need for massive parking lots and vehicle ownership altogether because there would just be autonomous vehicles out and about to help move from point A to point B on demand.
Now, you've got massive lobbies of car manufacturers and dealerships, parking lot operators, the driving industry, and the American psyche base of "car ownership = freedom" to contend with, so I doubt that will be a future we see in our lifetimes... but it DOES sound quite utopian vs. our current realities, and the technology is essentially "there" already.
If we're worried about monopolies, then I could also see a future (fringe DSA alignment coming), where these autonomous vehicles also become just an element of the municipal infrastructure. Very much a "futurist" take, but I don't think "eliminate driving by humans altogether" is as wild a concept as you think.
If you think owning a car equates to a feeling of independence in the US, you need to travel more. Europe loves cars. China loves cars. The lowly serfs of the USSR loved cars and worked themselves to the bone for the privilege of owning some shitbox. Yes, it is independence, and it should be valued.
True independence isn't owning a depreciating asset that sits idle 95% of the time, costs thousands in insurance, maintenance, and gas, and locks you into paying for parking wherever you go.
Real freedom is the ability to get anywhere, safely, at any time, without needing a driver's license, a designated driver, or $30k+ in capital. China and Europe love transit and cars, but they also prioritize functional mobility over forced vehicle ownership.
Nobody is saying human driving should be outlawed tomorrow, or that loving cars is bad. But conflating car ownership with independence ignores how forced car dependency actually limits freedom.
For millions of people- the elderly, the disabled, those who can't afford a $40,000 car - a world with autonomous fleets offers vastly MORE independence than our current setup. Expecting everyone to own a personal shitbox to participate in society isn't freedom; it's a tax on existence. AVs offer transportation on demand without the immense overhead, and a world with more of them, to the point of ubiquity, is absolutely a net gain for society.
"Nobody is saying human driving should be outlawed TOMORROW..." is exactly the point. Thank you for spelling it out for all the people out there who might revel in their foggy ignorance. Choice today, gone tomorrow.
Yes, it's known as Transportation as a Service. I see it as an add-on for buses, subways and other public transportation. Right now AV rides are definitely more expensive than Ubers or Lyfts, even taking into consideration that you don't tip an AV. It will take a while for Waymo to recoup all the money they spent researching and testing. I think it will be worth it. People who want to control their vehicle can either park it in a garage outside the main municipal area or rent a car for longer or more complex trips.
“Sure, research showed that nicotine is addictive and tobacco is a carcinogen, but the Nazis used “research” to show that the Aryans are the master race — you’re not a Nazi, are you?”
Worse, the Nazis themselves actually led anti-smoking campaigns in the 1930s, though I don’t know if folks in tobacco-producing states actually made that argument.
The steakhouse I worked at part time through high school just had boring Coors beer branded ashtrays. It was logical branding because alcohol really does make smoking "taste" better. This was the 1970's. My high school had smoking areas-for the students.
My high school (early 80's) had a smoking area, and my second year the administrators shut it down. There was an actual protest by students, and then for my remaining time there there was an unofficial "not permitted but not enforced" smoking area.
My wife and watch old movies all the time, and people were just smoking CONSTANTLY. I grew up with two HEAVY smokers, so even though I've never been a smoker myself, I definitely find myself romanticizing it a bit. Like, can you imagine Humphrey Bogart looking that cool without a cigarette? Because I can't.
There is one big difference between the two but I'm not sure how it affects Jeff's thesis, which is this is also a productivity thing. If a person doesn't have to drive a car to move materials from one place to another, he can do something else that is productive, so banning Waymos means you're eliminating additional potential productivity. But if you ban tobacco products, the only real effect will be people not being able to enjoy Laramie's Hi-Tar cigarettes, which are bursting with sweet Carolina smoke flavor.
If you can use a Waymo, you can use a taxi. So you aren't really eliminating productivity by banning them since you have to be with the items to load and unload them. And if your job is driving, then that IS your productivity. A person with no other opportunities will not be productive elsewhere, they will simply be a non-productive person who was pointlessly made redundant.
200 years ago, 90 percent of people worked in agriculture in the US. Today, it is 1 percent. If your argument was correct, 89 percent of modern Americans would be unemployed.
Wasting labor is stupid. The reason we produce so much today is because we automated lots of jobs and created new ones. The people who were displaced by automation work at the new jobs.
Your theory predicts colossal unemployment rates in the past that simply did not happen. The only time unemployment approached even 25 percent was the height of the Great Depression. Technological innovation has been relatively steady for the past two centuries. This has not resulted in hordes of unemployed people, it has resulted in people successfully finding new jobs.
Depending on the size of the freight and the industry, it's usually the dock workers who do the loading and unloading, not the drivers.
People are not trained to only have one skill in life that they can only apply to their lifelong career. Unless an individual has such severe disabilities, there is no reason to think a person who loses their job can not find another one somewhere.
The "people who lose their jobs in an industry can be retrained to do something else" myth is a myth. And even when people DO find work, it's at a steep loss in income of 15 to 35% over the long term. But to get back to the issue, why do we need dock workers? Why not have robots unload trucks and stock the warehouses? It's a dangerous job. Lives could be saved without people loading and unloading heavy crates with dangerous equipment. Shit, even the porn industry is worried that AI is going to wreck their income. I don't see an upside to anyone but the most secure employee.
Are you being glib? They used to have even more dock workers and stevedores and it was much more dangerous than it is now...and now they have pallet jacks and forklifts and other tech advances that make that job easier, safer, cheaper, etc.
What do you think was more likely to happen: when teamsters were told that horse drawn carriages were out and horseless carriages were in, did those people learn how to drive vehicles and/or find jobs in different industries? Or did they just become useless people who sat on their asses until they starved to death? If you think it's the former, you are a student of history. If you think it's the latter, you have an incredibly pessimistic view of human agency.
Your argument is that since people who can drive a horse-drawn carriage can then learn to drive a horseless carriage to maintain their livelihood, thusly under the new conceit, those who can drive cars and trucks can learn to drive driverless cars and trucks? An interesting theory.
I hadn't thought of it this way (which is why YOU'RE the content creator with the emphasis on "creative"!), and you might find some of the opposition to noncombusted nicotine products to be similarly anti-autonomous vehicle-ish.
For some additional context, this FP column from last year (after my client, Juul Labs, received FDA marketing authorization for their original product) from Joe Nocera might be of interest.
This is like arguing that the reason we don’t have colonies on Mars is because of Martian NIMBYs, and not that it’s actually a colossal engineering and financial problem that has yet to be solved. There are like 10 people who believe that Waymo’s are ready to scale nationwide, none of whom actually work at Waymo. At this point, Google has invested around $200 billion in AI vs. $2 billion in Waymo, so it’s pretty clear which they expect to be viable!
Waymo's data is peer-reviewed: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/05/waymo-making-streets-safer-for-vru/
And the results are so stark that even if there were problems with data collection that substantially altered the results (and maybe there are!), the point would still stand. I would still write this article if serious accidents were 20 percent less likely instead of 94 percent less likely.
Yeah, this is a case where, even if the benefits are overstated, the results are so stark that the other side has one hell of an uphill battle if they want to show people they're right.
Also, bear in mind that the more AVS we have on the streets the safer it will be, so this is really preliminary.
I am fascinated by how the anti-smoking crusade has morphed into anti-vaping. I haven't smoked in decades (being old and having survived the 60s Mad Men era) and have never vaped. But as I understand it, vaping is just consuming possibly helpful and non-dangerous nicotine in a water vapor. None of the tars and other cancer-causing elements. But somehow, just because vaping looks kinda like smoking, it must be shamed and banned. I hear one argument against vaping may be that it is a "slippery slope" to smoking (reefer madness!) . . . however, it seems more likely a stepping stone away from smoking for many. But the arguments against vaping, as with autonomous cars, have nothing to do with rationality.
From Google:
Health Risks:
Nicotine Addiction: Most vapes deliver high amounts of nicotine, which is addictive, raises heart rate and blood pressure, and harms brain development in people under 25.
Lung Damage: Inhaled vapors can cause airway inflammation, worsen asthma, and increase the risk of chronic bronchitis and COPD.
Toxic Chemicals: Vaping exposes the body to harmful substances like formaldehyde, acrolein, and heavy metals such as nickel and lead from the heating coils.
Sure seems dangerous to me.
If the question is, is nicotine vaping a good hobby for smoking naive teens to take up, the answer is unequivocally "no". If the question is, is nicotine vaping a safe and effective method of smoking cessation for cigarette smokers, the answer is unequivocally "yes." Preferring to talk about question 1 doesn't change the answer to question 2.
I would describe it as "safer than smoking, not as safe as not vaping."
Agreed.
Except the person above who this poster was replying to is clearly treating vaping as just generally fine and anti-vaping rhetoric as a sort of hysterical overflow of anti-smoking rhetoric.
Vaping does seem to be not as bad as smoking tobacco, so if used to replace cigarettes, it's a step in the right direction, but my impression is that the vast majority of young people who vape aren't using it to get off a tobacco habit. They take up vaping because it's easier and cheaper than cigarettes and feels relatively harmless, even though it isn't.
The vaping companies seem to agree too. Vaping is not marketed as a boring old way to get off cigarettes like nicotine patches are, it's marketed to appeal to new customers who have never smoked before, and it's hard to imagine that once you've picked up the addiction, you're not going to be more open to getting a fix the old fashioned way too if the circumstances are right.
I can hear the future lawyers now... "Did you consume vapes between 2000 and 2030 and get six kinds of cancer? You may be entitled to compensation...." And the consumers will be like "but random substack poster Ted Swing assured me it was unequivocally a safe and effective method of smoking cessation."
You keep conflating the question of are e-cigarettes harmful (they are) with the question of are e-cigarettes lower risk than smoking cigarettes (the evidence suggests that they are). If you are interested in the truth, I would encourage you to look at Levett et al. (2023), Lee and Farsalinos (2025), and Andrew and Zhao (2025).
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(23)00295-4/pdf
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12954-025-01230-y.pdf
https://www.ovid.com/jnls/accd/fulltext/10.4103/accj.accj_5_25
Oh hush. It's not fair to bring up "data" and "evidence" when someone like "Former Dem" is trying very hard to brag about being a highly skilled arsehole.
Awww thanks.
"From Google:"
In other words, you Googled "vaping" and then copy-pasted what the Google AI thing said. This is not convincing.
"Health Risks: [it's not good for you and might make your asthma worse, if you have asthma already}"
Wow, that sounds so scary and dangerous next to smoking cigarettes, which contain tar, formaldehyde (which you mentioned), arsenic, and trace elements of cyanide. Thank god people are still smoking cigarettes, rather than those evil vapes that contain nickel and stuff! They don't even kill you from lung cancer when you're 45! Weaksauce!
Serious question: why are you so annoyed at other people's attempts to survive addiction without dying?
For the record, the nicotine is dissolved not in water but in propylene glycol (PG) and/or glycerol, but those are also non-toxic (see note) and have been used in a wide range of applications for decades, including ones involving ingestion and non-vaping inhalation by humans, despite the people that just assume “and youre putting god-knows-what newfangled chemicals in your lungs!”
But yes, a knee-jerk anti-vaping reaction can come down to an immediate (and subconscious) feeling that “it looks like smoke so is basically smoke”. One minor thing I’ve also noticed is many people are under the impression that nicotine itself is a carcinogen or otherwise toxic.
HOWEVER! If we go to a more conscious level of motivation, I really think many people are just fundamentally repulsed by the idea of “cheating” your way into better health outcomes, and this shows up in other areas too. It just seems wrong, on a moral level, for someone to escape an unhealthy situation or bad habit (ex. smoking or obesity) without serious toil, without feeling the mental and physical pain (ex. withdrawal or diet/exercise), and simply taking a novel, easier, and effective shortcut (ex. vaping or GLP-1). You have to pay a toll.
They don’t think it “counts”. At the very least, that it *should not* count. And this too, I think is subconsciously converted into an intellectual outlet of “alright, surely it’s all a big lie anyway. There *must* be toxins just as bad in the e-juice, we just have to find it. There *must* be quack researchers getting paid off by big pharma to lie about GLP-1’s benefits/safety, and we just have to find proof.” Not all who make that argument have the “you must suffer” compulsion, but all who have the compulsion try to express it via material reasoning.
I think this is very culturally informed too. I wouldn’t be surprised if this angle was much less prevalent in, say, East Asia, compared to here in the US or other places with similar religious backgrounds (despite our collapsed religiosity).
(NOTE: anyone that’s about to hit me with a “so you think im just a fundamentalist for not liking vaping?” or “so you think im Chinese for liking vaping?” or “so you think drinking a bottle of PG is non-toxic?” or “so you think babies should get GLP-jabbed?”, fuck off with the force of 9001 suns)
And vaping also doesn’t create secondhand smoke that could hurt other people. (Unless you consider their fruity, cotton-candy smell to be harmful, I guess.) I really don’t get the shaming of vaping. It seems like a good way to help people replace a harmful habit with a relatively benign one.
>It seems like a good way to help people replace a harmful habit with a relatively benign one.
My main objection is that is seems like it encourages _new_ users much more than replacing smoking from existing tobacco users. I have no objection to some 40 year old switching from a pack a day, to vaping. I am concerned with 18-year olds picking up vaping because it is both cool and "safe."
Yeah, I agree that it is bad for kids to start vaping.
To be fair, I oppose vaping because it smells bad, just like smoking anything does. I don't care if people want to smoke outside away from others, in clubs that specifically allow it, or in the privacy of their own homes, but I do not like people pulling out vape pens in any place where smoking bans exist. It's gross!
Public health used to be all about meeting people where they are. At some point in the past 10-15 years, it took a weird turn where in some cases such as drug users, they're still meeting people where they are and even scolding other people for complaining about the externalities (apparently we're not supposed to be upset about people smoking meth on the train) of people's chosen behaviors, while becoming incredibly moralistic about other behaviors like using nicotine. I suspect it has to do with how the populations are viewed in the progressive universe. Users of meth or fentanyl are seen as marginalized and victims of capitalism. Most nicotine users are employed (some are even biohackers) and are seen as less worthy of being met where they are.
I think you might be noticing a double standard that arises as a natural side effect of modern doctrines such as Intersectionality, which tend to provide a theoretical underpinning for double standards by stipulating that individuals face varying degrees of difficulty and therefore require differing degrees of accommodation.
Although "double standards" is a bit of a misnomer because in reality it's more of a multidimensional matrix of standards that require differential equations to properly weight. The important thing to remember is that the new morality arises not from treating everyone the same, but from treating everyone differently, depending.
It means you can scold the same privileged person both for vaping nicotine and for not voting to fully fund needle exchanges.
One can put on their tinfoil hat and question to what extent the tobacco industry is on board with that crusade in order to sink a competing product. After all, if vaping were banned or heavily regulated, you'd suddenly have a near monopoly on nicotine addicts.
Also, there are health effects of vaping and the extent is probably not yet fully known because it's a newer technology. That said, most of the horror stories are from dumb teenagers who just started taking thousands of puffs a day rather than exercise any moderation.
Sure because no one is making money from the vaping industry, it's definitely not growing by 30% year over year with huge profit margins, and surely if they tell us it's harmless it is.
I never said vaping was harmless. In fact, my post quite literally says "there are health effects of vaping." Nor did I say that people don't financially benefit from it. None of that really refutes that I was saying.
One wonders how many of the outlets and people pushing this line of thought are the same people who, back in the early 2020s, also pushed the line that taking any kind of factor other than "lives immediately saved" into account when dealing with COVID meant that you hated Grandma, the immunocompromised, and puppies.
Yes because a two year long global lockdown that destroyed untold numbers of local businesses and kept kids out of school for the most formative years of their lives was a way bigger deal than…uh…less uber drivers? Did you really need someone to point this out to you? Is this the limit of your galaxy-brained perception?
Like can any of yall actually make a freakin point and say outright what you think you’re trying to say? A bunch of idiots standing around scratching their heads going “hhmmmMmmMmmmMmmM mighty suspicious don’t you think????” Is not the intellectual mega-slam-dunk that you all seem to think it is.
Yes we get it, corporations bad, data evil, scientists corrupted, CIA psyop. But you say that in response to literally everything. Do you have anything else to say? Is there a part two? Or does your curiosity just stop at your George Carlin impression?
You seem to be confused.
My point was that the people pushing the "Waymo is bad because of job losses even if it saves lives" seem to have some overlap with the "hard lockdowns forever!" crowd.
I will admit that I haven’t done a deep dive on other sources of data, but I feel like we can’t have a belly laugh over the tobacco companies telling us how safe their product is and then just accept that the official Waymo blog is perhaps, just possibly, taking a more rosy view of their product. This is, after all, the company that can’t figure out why their cars are blowing past stopped school buses with flashing lights and extended stop arms. (https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY26FH007.aspx)
Waymo has work to do in that arena for sure, but human drivers blow past school buses with alarming frequency. When the worst happens, there is no big corporation to sue, either, just ruined lives in many families. And insurance rates that are levied on individuals and that continually rise. Personally, dropping car maintenance and insurance from my budget would be a relief.
I'm not a Waymo fangirl at all. I'm purely Waymo curious. I do think a Waymo type future is inevitable. I don't think we are there yet.
Agreed, but most busses now have cameras that catch these drivers and, at least here, the sheriff dept hunts them down and the fines are significant. My argument, though, is that we have no idea how safe these vehicles are at this point because the data has all been self collected. Jeff’s thesis is “unions would rather you die” and is based on self collected data in a few environments and situations.
I’m also not some Luddite. I’ve worked in tech for 40 years and still believe that it is, overall, a benefit. But these companies always exaggerate the benefits and massively downplay the costs of their products.
Heh yes, as an ex-HP employee, I agree companies downplay the risks and do not assess all the tradeoffs of new technology.
I live in a town with notoriously bad drivers, so I am sure that other municipalities deal with bad drivers in a much more efficient way. We just recently had a repeat drunk driving offender kill a family of four not far from where I live, so I am very sensitive to the topic of "people drive better than automated systems" right now.
Accident data seems like one place where we might trust the data more? Especially if you have third party collection of the data from insurance claims and police reports. My concerns would be more with playing games with the methodology rather than raw data - which should be something validatable.
All good arguments for stronger public transportation infrastructure.
Absolutely!
Susan: You can drop maintenance and insurance now. They're called Lyft and Uber. I doubt Waymo will be any cheaper.....
I have had too many sketchy Uber and Lyft drivers to feel comfortable outsourcing all my driving to them, unfortunately. It's an option if I am traveling with someone, but I don't do it alone, and definitely don't Uber at night alone. So it's a solution, but a partial one.
Susan D: Of course, understandable! I really don't like either because customer service is so minimal already and it's going to get worse.....
Yeah man, you can never trust those corporate scientists. Clearly all their data is completely fabricated and in such an obvious way that nobody has been able to make any serious counter arguments except to point to a sign that says “CORPORATIONS!”
Why is it there’s always some faux-wise idiot around to point out that hey, guys, I know that SpaceX SAYS that Mars exists, but have you considered that it’s all corporate lies????
How do you even go through life? Are you suspicious every time you open your fridge that it might be 1,000 degrees inside? Sure it was designed to keep things cold, but by AN CORPORATIONS!”
If your only argument is “but like, incentives or something because corporation” then you literally have no argument except a meek appeal to what you think passes for prudent skepticism. The next step is to then point out what those big misses and bad data actually are, not just stop at pointing out an obvious but pointless fact. But there’s never a next step. If your skepticism never leads to any tangible point then all you’re doing is making noise.
Great post but you lost me at your Cocaine-a-Cola point. We SHOULD bring that back! It WOULD increase productivity! Unwanted side effects like an increase in screenplays can be handled with a sin tax.
If someone hits you with the argument on Waymo should be banned because of the threat it eliminates jobs, respond with "so you're saying we shouldn't have Medicare for All because of the thousands of jobs it would eliminate in the insurance industry" and watch steam shoot out of their ears.
I have actually heard real people make that argument. I think it was part of the motivation for Joe Lieberman killing the public option, because insurance is such a big part of Connecticut's economy
Oh, it's definitely an argument against public healthcare. My point is it's just not one I'd expect any Waymo opponent to support so the logic of "things that eliminate jobs are inherently bad" fails right there.
Jeff’s comparison to tobacco is more accurate than some may think because of the invention of smartphones. Cars are safer than ever, easier to drive than ever, and yet people still crash their cars. I would guess a majority are due to avoidable human error, such as driving while drunk or tired, driving sober but you know you suck at it, or simply being an asshole who speeds through stop signs and thinks your destination is more important than others. However, so many idiots are on the road and staring down at their phones while going 10mph near pedestrians or 55mph on a freeway with a 65mph limit. I see it constantly near, in, and around NYC, an area where roads are so bad and interchanges are so complex it’s a wonder 40,000 don’t die per day. And when I lived in Los Angeles for a year in 2012, right after smartphones really took off, I witnessed 3 heads-down-at-phone rear end crashes. The third time it was 20-something female in Pasadena going 15-20 mph just smack into a car at light; I saw it coming for so many seconds I laughed as her airbag went off in her face.
So yes, people who died from smoking did it to themselves. Many people who crash and die from driving drunk, tired, or sending a f’ing text did it to themselves. And both smokers and crack-shot drivers took and still take other innocent lives along with them. So maybe we should give Waymo a shot and hopefully it ends up being less annoying e-sig smokers.
There's an additional argument against Waymo: Waymos are made by tech companies and tech companies are the most evil companies on earth because they pay annoying people who majored in STEM fields a lot of money and that's just plain wrong.
Speaking of tobacco and jobs, iirc when Joseph Califano was Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (as they used to call) and the anti-smoking movement was just taking off, he gave a speech in North Carolina in which he said something to the effect of “I have to watch myself, because I know that not only is your state the nation’s leading producer of tobacco, it is also the leading producer of bricks.”
“putting cocaine back in soft drinks would surely boost productivity, especially in the Terrible Screenplay industry. “
We need to maintain our dominance in this field! Clearly it’s a national security risk if we do!
National Treasure 3 isn't going to write itself.
I'm team Ban-Waymo. They serve no real purpose. If you can't or won't drive, take a cab or mass transit. Worrying about people who die in car accidents is the wrong statistic, unless the goal of team Yay-Waymo is to eliminate all driving by humans altogether. The question should be "how many people die annually in taxi accidents?" That number is 29, nationwide. To disrupt an entire industry and upend the livelihoods of 200,000 taxi drivers for such a low number is irrational.
It took decades to get from "elite businessmen have carphones" to "most people in African have mobile phones" but (for better and worse) it happened. Waymos in a few cities are early steps towards a world where 1.2 million road deaths drops to near 0, so yes, that's our goal.
If Waymos really are safer than most human drivers, why not eliminate most driving by humans altogether.
If people took a cab every time they didn't feel like driving the number of people who die in taxi accidents would be far higher. Part of the appeal of Waymo is that it is cheaper than taxis, so it will result in more people using it than have used taxis in the past, thereby reducing the amount of driving by humans and saving lives.
Also, if one of the 29 people dying in the taxi accidents was my child, I would personally tell all 200,000 taxi drivers to their faces to suck it up and get new jobs.
12,000 people die in the US die in stairwells every year. By your logic, that is 40,000% more important than taxi deaths. And yet I predict that you do not have 400 times the opinion that stairs should be swapped with ramps.
I actually own a split-level house partly so I never have to descend more than six stairs at once when I am at home. There's no need to take risks you don't have to.
If ramps were as cheap and easy to deploy as Waymos are, I would have 400x the opinion. But ramps take up far more space than stairs do, I would not be as gung-ho about Waymos if they were all the size of semi-trucks.
In other words, the policies that your advocate for don't really effect you, so you can advocate for them at no cost. But if some were to advocate for the burning down of all split level homes because statistics say that they are more dangerous than other types of housing, presumably you would oppose such an endeavor.
If statistics said they were more dangerous than all other types of homes I'd move out ASAP and light the match myself.
They're way more dangerous than all other types of homes that use ramps instead of stairs. So once must ask: will you be replacing your stairs?
As a woman who has squirmed through advances by certain cab drivers, and knows others who have been straight up sexually assaulted, deaths are only part of the picture. Not being made to fear for your safety while taking a for-hire vehicle is also a major plus in my book.
There are also issues of cabbies not wanting to travel to certain areas arbitrarily or discriminating against certain riders - be it Black or blind.
I'm sorry you we're made uncomfortable. Those cabbies should be fired. Are you arguing that your discomfort equates to 199,000 other people losing their jobs along with the bad ones? Or are you arguing that all cabbies are closet rapists?
Yeah, a Waymo isn't going to tell me that the debit machine is down when I'm drunk and refuse to let me leave the vehicle in an attempt to force me to go to an ATM and scam me out of more money
I think I'm very much in the camp of a long-term goal to, yes, eliminate all driving by humans altogether.
I was talking to a friend of a friend who worked at Google (on the Glass team, so take that with a grain of salt since they weren't sending their best, folks) and one of the ideas she discussed was a future in which we essentially eliminated the need for massive parking lots and vehicle ownership altogether because there would just be autonomous vehicles out and about to help move from point A to point B on demand.
Now, you've got massive lobbies of car manufacturers and dealerships, parking lot operators, the driving industry, and the American psyche base of "car ownership = freedom" to contend with, so I doubt that will be a future we see in our lifetimes... but it DOES sound quite utopian vs. our current realities, and the technology is essentially "there" already.
If we're worried about monopolies, then I could also see a future (fringe DSA alignment coming), where these autonomous vehicles also become just an element of the municipal infrastructure. Very much a "futurist" take, but I don't think "eliminate driving by humans altogether" is as wild a concept as you think.
If you think owning a car equates to a feeling of independence in the US, you need to travel more. Europe loves cars. China loves cars. The lowly serfs of the USSR loved cars and worked themselves to the bone for the privilege of owning some shitbox. Yes, it is independence, and it should be valued.
True independence isn't owning a depreciating asset that sits idle 95% of the time, costs thousands in insurance, maintenance, and gas, and locks you into paying for parking wherever you go.
Real freedom is the ability to get anywhere, safely, at any time, without needing a driver's license, a designated driver, or $30k+ in capital. China and Europe love transit and cars, but they also prioritize functional mobility over forced vehicle ownership.
Nobody is saying human driving should be outlawed tomorrow, or that loving cars is bad. But conflating car ownership with independence ignores how forced car dependency actually limits freedom.
For millions of people- the elderly, the disabled, those who can't afford a $40,000 car - a world with autonomous fleets offers vastly MORE independence than our current setup. Expecting everyone to own a personal shitbox to participate in society isn't freedom; it's a tax on existence. AVs offer transportation on demand without the immense overhead, and a world with more of them, to the point of ubiquity, is absolutely a net gain for society.
"Real freedom is the ability to get anywhere, safely, at any time, without needing a driver's license, a designated driver, or $30k+ in capital."
By relying on the kindness of others in order to get around? Forget that noise.
Do you consider a trains and busses on a known schedule “the kindness of others?”
If the autonomous vehicles are truly ubiquitous and on demand, then you’re not relying on anything except a different municipal system.
Yes, actually, I do.
Now, have I used planes, trains, buses, etc.? Yes. Do I consider my usage of such to have been an exercise in "true freedom?" Absolutely not.
"Nobody is saying human driving should be outlawed TOMORROW..." is exactly the point. Thank you for spelling it out for all the people out there who might revel in their foggy ignorance. Choice today, gone tomorrow.
Yes, it's known as Transportation as a Service. I see it as an add-on for buses, subways and other public transportation. Right now AV rides are definitely more expensive than Ubers or Lyfts, even taking into consideration that you don't tip an AV. It will take a while for Waymo to recoup all the money they spent researching and testing. I think it will be worth it. People who want to control their vehicle can either park it in a garage outside the main municipal area or rent a car for longer or more complex trips.
Yes, we should eliminate all driving by humans. Waymo is the stepping stone towards that future.
It was sad to see Bob Simon die this way so even one can be a very high number. It's also more than just deaths, lots of maiming and serious injuries.
“Sure, research showed that nicotine is addictive and tobacco is a carcinogen, but the Nazis used “research” to show that the Aryans are the master race — you’re not a Nazi, are you?”
Worse, the Nazis themselves actually led anti-smoking campaigns in the 1930s, though I don’t know if folks in tobacco-producing states actually made that argument.
I love watching very old movies where everyone smokes. They even had ashtrays in hospitals.....
I like the historical photos of McDonalds-branded ashtrays.
ronetc: Oh wow I want one of those!
The steakhouse I worked at part time through high school just had boring Coors beer branded ashtrays. It was logical branding because alcohol really does make smoking "taste" better. This was the 1970's. My high school had smoking areas-for the students.
My high school (early 80's) had a smoking area, and my second year the administrators shut it down. There was an actual protest by students, and then for my remaining time there there was an unofficial "not permitted but not enforced" smoking area.
Johnny Carson and guests were smoking on camera until at least the late 70s.
Chris O'Connell: I remember! What a different world it was.....☕️ & 🚬
One of the reasons old sports pictures have that airy mystique is that the entire arena was full of cigarette smoke! This great shot of Dr. J is a cool example: https://neilleifer.com/cdn/shop/products/1164_700x.jpg?v=1658842211
My wife and watch old movies all the time, and people were just smoking CONSTANTLY. I grew up with two HEAVY smokers, so even though I've never been a smoker myself, I definitely find myself romanticizing it a bit. Like, can you imagine Humphrey Bogart looking that cool without a cigarette? Because I can't.
There's a film of the what was later to be called superbowl I where the KC QB is smoking in the locker room at half time.
John Murphy: Yes! I remember those pictures and those smoky arenas! Thanks!
There is one big difference between the two but I'm not sure how it affects Jeff's thesis, which is this is also a productivity thing. If a person doesn't have to drive a car to move materials from one place to another, he can do something else that is productive, so banning Waymos means you're eliminating additional potential productivity. But if you ban tobacco products, the only real effect will be people not being able to enjoy Laramie's Hi-Tar cigarettes, which are bursting with sweet Carolina smoke flavor.
If you can use a Waymo, you can use a taxi. So you aren't really eliminating productivity by banning them since you have to be with the items to load and unload them. And if your job is driving, then that IS your productivity. A person with no other opportunities will not be productive elsewhere, they will simply be a non-productive person who was pointlessly made redundant.
200 years ago, 90 percent of people worked in agriculture in the US. Today, it is 1 percent. If your argument was correct, 89 percent of modern Americans would be unemployed.
Wasting labor is stupid. The reason we produce so much today is because we automated lots of jobs and created new ones. The people who were displaced by automation work at the new jobs.
89 percent of Americans who can live to 250 would be unemployed, under my argument.
Your theory predicts colossal unemployment rates in the past that simply did not happen. The only time unemployment approached even 25 percent was the height of the Great Depression. Technological innovation has been relatively steady for the past two centuries. This has not resulted in hordes of unemployed people, it has resulted in people successfully finding new jobs.
You're the one who brought up 89 percent of 250 year old Americans. Now I'm the one being hyperbolic? Let's restart. What do you do for a living?
There will be systems of picking up and delivering things by autonomous vehicles involving automated lockers and transport systems.
Depending on the size of the freight and the industry, it's usually the dock workers who do the loading and unloading, not the drivers.
People are not trained to only have one skill in life that they can only apply to their lifelong career. Unless an individual has such severe disabilities, there is no reason to think a person who loses their job can not find another one somewhere.
The "people who lose their jobs in an industry can be retrained to do something else" myth is a myth. And even when people DO find work, it's at a steep loss in income of 15 to 35% over the long term. But to get back to the issue, why do we need dock workers? Why not have robots unload trucks and stock the warehouses? It's a dangerous job. Lives could be saved without people loading and unloading heavy crates with dangerous equipment. Shit, even the porn industry is worried that AI is going to wreck their income. I don't see an upside to anyone but the most secure employee.
Are you being glib? They used to have even more dock workers and stevedores and it was much more dangerous than it is now...and now they have pallet jacks and forklifts and other tech advances that make that job easier, safer, cheaper, etc.
What do you think was more likely to happen: when teamsters were told that horse drawn carriages were out and horseless carriages were in, did those people learn how to drive vehicles and/or find jobs in different industries? Or did they just become useless people who sat on their asses until they starved to death? If you think it's the former, you are a student of history. If you think it's the latter, you have an incredibly pessimistic view of human agency.
Your argument is that since people who can drive a horse-drawn carriage can then learn to drive a horseless carriage to maintain their livelihood, thusly under the new conceit, those who can drive cars and trucks can learn to drive driverless cars and trucks? An interesting theory.
Haha, yes, that is literally the thing I am saying, 110%.
I hadn't thought of it this way (which is why YOU'RE the content creator with the emphasis on "creative"!), and you might find some of the opposition to noncombusted nicotine products to be similarly anti-autonomous vehicle-ish.
For some additional context, this FP column from last year (after my client, Juul Labs, received FDA marketing authorization for their original product) from Joe Nocera might be of interest.
https://www.thefp.com/p/time-to-clear-the-air-on-juul
This is like arguing that the reason we don’t have colonies on Mars is because of Martian NIMBYs, and not that it’s actually a colossal engineering and financial problem that has yet to be solved. There are like 10 people who believe that Waymo’s are ready to scale nationwide, none of whom actually work at Waymo. At this point, Google has invested around $200 billion in AI vs. $2 billion in Waymo, so it’s pretty clear which they expect to be viable!