{"id":353436,"date":"2026-09-22T11:46:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T11:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353436\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T11:46:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T11:46:59","slug":"waymo-backed-group-wrangles-big-names-to-sell-albany-on-self-driving-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353436\/","title":{"rendered":"Waymo-Backed Group Wrangles Big Names to Sell Albany on Self-Driving Cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new Waymo-backed advocacy group couched in the language of traffic safety and stocked with ex-elected officials and other public sector heavyweights launched last week to support bringing self-driving cars to New York state \u2014 after Gov. Hochul backed organized labor and nixed her plans<\/a> to legalize them early in last year\u2019s budget negotiations.<\/p>\n

A Better Road Forward, a 501(c)(4) that describes itself as a \u201cstatewide coalition of New Yorkers,\u201d frames itself as \u201can educational resource and a platform for community engagement\u201d as Hochul and state legislators weigh letting \u201cautonomous vehicle\u201d companies like Waymo expand beyond driver-monitored testing currently underway<\/a> in New York City and Buffalo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis campaign is about bringing New Yorkers into the conversation about the future of autonomous passenger vehicles on our streets,\u201d Basil Seggos, the group\u2019s advisory board chair and the former commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said in a statement announcing the new group.<\/p>\n

New York, Seggos added, \u201chas a chance to seize the moment on innovation and sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The advisory board includes former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who now runs the homelessness nonprofit WIN; Rev. Mark Blue of the Buffalo NAACP; former Bronx Assembly Member Kenny Burgos, who now leads the state\u2019s apartment-owner trade group; former state Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Mark Schroeder; and Julie Samuels of the tech-backed policy think-tank Tech:NYC.<\/p>\n

The group plans to put on community events, create a testimonial website and buy advertising. Waymo is providing funding and \u201cadvice and support\u201d for the group, the company confirmed to Streetsblog.<\/p>\n

\u201cWaymo supports A Better Road Forward and its mission to improve transportation safety and accessibility in New York, however its leaders and members speak for themselves,\u201d company rep Ethan Teichner said in a statement. \u201cWe are providing advice and support to the coalition because we know an increasing number of New Yorkers are excited about what autonomous vehicles can do for their communities, but don\u2019t have a platform to make their voices heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cAutonomous vehicles must be deployed responsibly, guided by a statewide framework that accounts for the experiences of New Yorkers who face persistent transportation challenges,\u201d Teichner added.<\/p>\n

Schroeder, a former Buffalo city comptroller who spent nearly a decade running the state DMV, said his role is partly to translate the self-driving gospel for Albany\u2019s institutional players \u2014 including labor unions that helped kill Hochul\u2019s AV push earlier this year. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou have people who are adroit, who have information on it, and who are going to be able to engage in conversation with the assembly, with the senate,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a commissioner of DMV, we had 3,000 employees, and every one was a member of a union, CSEA or PEF. I know how to talk to them and understand what their issues are, and then we need to work things out together. Why? Because we all have the same constituency: the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hochul\u2019s abruptly abandoned plan<\/a> would have let municipalities like Buffalo and Albany opt into driverless pilots and required companies pay $1 million fee to participate. The governor cut the measure out of her budget in February, before lawmakers even had a chance to formally weigh in, citing pushback from \u201cstakeholders, including in the legislature.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reversal was a win for an unusual alliance of labor unions, safety advocates and the Uber-backed Independent Drivers Guild<\/a>. At the same time, Bronx Assembly Member Karines Reyes and state Sen. Luis Sepulveda introduced a bill<\/a> to ban robotaxis outright.<\/p>\n

Waymo spent relatively little defending the governor\u2019s plan compared with the tech industry\u2019s other Albany priorities this year: The company spent about $1.1 million in lobbying<\/a> in the first half of 2026, compared to the more than $15 million Uber and Uber-backed Citizens for Affordable Rates spent successfully pushing Hochul\u2019s bid to lower insurance costs at the expense of traffic crash victims. <\/p>\n

Waymo\u2019s human-operated New York City testing permit has since expired. No company has approval to run driverless service anywhere in the state.<\/p>\n

Arguments on both sides<\/p>\n

Supporters of AV point to Waymo\u2019s claim<\/a> that its vehicles crash and injure pedestrians less often than human drivers do nationally. <\/p>\n

Some disability advocates have echoed that case. Rodney Stanford of the American Council of the Blind of New York told Streetsblog<\/a> that human rideshare drivers sometimes turn away blind riders with service dogs. \u201cRobot taxis will obey the laws, the human element, not so much,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The safety case is far from settled, though. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Waymo<\/a> after one of its vehicles struck a child near a California school, and the company has acknowledged its cars repeatedly failed to stop for loading school buses in Austin, Texas \u2014 incidents a Johns Hopkins analysis<\/a> this year cited in finding AV safety data remains limited and inconsistent industrywide. In July, police in San Mateo, California, detained two teenagers<\/a> after a Waymo vehicle\u2019s sensors flagged a safety concern, reigniting privacy questions.<\/p>\n

Still, organized labor remains the most persistent obstacle.<\/p>\n

A 2026 Open Plans analysis<\/a> warned that a robotaxi rollout would reshape congestion, curb space and driver livelihoods citywide. Street safety advocates aren\u2019t sold<\/a> on the technology\u2019s readiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new Waymo-backed advocacy group couched in the language of traffic safety and stocked with ex-elected officials and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50,52479],"class_list":["post-353436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-promoted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}