“Trial lawyers are lobbying against self-driving cars because they’re too safe. They need people to be killed and injured so that they have material for lawsuits,” notes Paul Graham.
Economics professor Alex Tabarrok explains:
Roughly 37,000–40,000 Americans die in auto accidents every year. We now have large‑scale, real‑world evidence—from Waymo and a joint analysis with Swiss Re—that driverless operations can be substantially safer than matched human driving within their current operating domains. The latest data show that over 220 million miles driven, Waymo vehicles–in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta–have 94% fewer serious injuries, 82% fewer air bag deployments, and 93% fewer pedestrian injuries. The evidence is not fully independent, but it is unusually transparent, large‑scale evidence.
So with thousands of lives annually in the balance who is against autonomous vehicles (AVs)? Trial lawyers. Remarkably the trial lawyers saw the writing on the wall very early and the have been lobbying against AVs for nearly a decade! The American Association for Justice, the trial lawyers’ lobby, has been a prominent opponent to AV legislation (see also reports here). (They have been joined by Democrats worried about labor and demanding that heavy trucks be excluded).
The trial lawyers earn a huge amount litigating ordinary auto accidents–Annual U.S. auto insurance payouts (liability + PIP/MedPay) are on the order of $180–220B and trial lawyers are very eager to retain the right to sue car manufacturers for product liability.
Trial lawyers could still recover from Waymo for an accident — it has plenty of insurance — but there would be many fewer accidents to sue over. (“Waymo vehicles are already insured at $5 million liability coverage per vehicle, far higher levels than most human drivers are covered”).
Waymo self-driving taxis now transport thousands of passengers every day in American cities.
Self-driving trucks are already being used safely to supply oil and gas wells in Texas.
Self-driving cars are generally safer than human-driven cars. “Driverless Waymo vehicles have driven 170 million miles through December 2025 without a human driver in the car. Compared to the average human driver over the same distance, Waymo driverless cars experienced 83% fewer airbag deployment crashes, 82% fewer injury-causing crashes, and 92% fewer serious injury or worse crashes.”
Amazon is planning to produce up to 10,000 robotaxis per year in a California plant.
“Uber and Baidu are teaming up to bring autonomous taxis to the world. Baidu’s robotaxis” had already logged more than 11 million rides in China by 2025, reported The Doomslayer.
