{"id":85378,"date":"2025-12-07T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T20:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/85378\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T20:33:09","slug":"waymo-coming-to-san-diego-in-2026-gets-mixed-reactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/85378\/","title":{"rendered":"Waymo coming to San Diego in 2026, gets mixed reactions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driverless taxis may be on their way to San Diego, but even though the cars aren\u2019t on the road yet, the controversy is already in the fast lane.<\/p>\n

Most people don\u2019t feel the same. AAA data<\/a> has found that 6 in 10 U.S. drivers say they\u2019re afraid to ride in a fully driverless vehicle.<\/p>\n

“Never want to ride on one, in one, don\u2019t think the technology is there yet,” San Diego resident Karen Padilla says. <\/p>\n

Waymo argues the technology is ready. On its website<\/a>, the company says its rider-only vehicles have logged 96 million miles, and compared to human drivers over the same distance, have had 91% fewer crashes causing serious injury and 80% fewer crashes with any injuries.<\/p>\n

But the controversy against these cars doesn\u2019t just revolve around safety. San Diego Council member Sean Elo-Rivera is leading that conversation. <\/p>\n

“Driving is a way that a lot of people are helping pay the bills with,” Elo-Rivera says. “And so, anytime we are introducing something that can be disruptive to people’s livelihoods, I think we should take a moment to ask ourselves what those impacts will be and how to mitigate them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elo-Rivera is asking Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers to give local cities the power to vote on whether companies like Waymo can operate in their communities.<\/p>\n

“I think that as a community we should have some say when new technologies that have an impact on our lives,” Elo-Rivera says. \u201cI’m tired of multi-billion dollar global corporations extracting everyday people for every cent that we have with and not giving a damn about what impacts it has on us as individuals and us as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n

As technology keeps advancing and people worry about jobs being replaced Council member Elo-Rivera says local control is key to protecting workers in San Diego. But until they hear back from State leaders, they\u2019ll have to wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driverless taxis may be on their way to San Diego, but even though the cars aren\u2019t on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[23183,74,76,75,21524,5987],"class_list":{"0":"post-85378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-driverless-cars","9":"tag-san-diego","10":"tag-san-diego-headlines","11":"tag-san-diego-news","12":"tag-sean-elo-rivera","13":"tag-waymo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}