The Trial of the Driverless Car
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What experiences shaped Abdi Aziz's views on driverless cars?
Our first story was about a driver, a robot driver who evolved over many years at the nudging and training and machinations of a team of tech people in California. The second story I want to tell you also starts with the driver, a driver who is also going to evolve and change due to the machinations of some different West Coast tech companies. The difference is that this driver is a human being. Chapter one, Abdi Aziz. I met Abdi Aziz in Boston, where he's been a driver for many decades. He was doing it all the way back in the 90s. Back then, he considered taxi driver to be a decent job, a career. Professionally, I've been driving for 30 years now. 30 years? Yes. I had a limo service for 10 years, and then I was doing five years for a cab, a taxi.
And then, one day in 2011, Abdi Aziz was hanging out at the airport with the other drivers when these men from the future showed up with a plan to change his life. When Uber came, I remember by 2011, they came to the airport. We were in the waiting area at the Logan. We have a designated parking lot where we wait the fares. So they come there and they say, hey, you know, we are introducing you in a company that will do same as a taxi, but it's an app. We want you guys to join with us. And, you know, you can have your own car. We will give you a phone with the app. and we can sign you up and you can make money. What did you think? At the time, I say, it is good, but you didn't come here to help us. You come here to kill this business.
Okay? You knew? I knew. Abdi Aziz had not been born yesterday. Here's what he understood immediately. The taxi business he operated in, up until now, had worked as a kind of monopoly. In Boston, like many American cities, you legally were not allowed to drive a cab without a taxi license, a medallion. New medallions were almost never issued. So assuming you could afford to buy or rent a medallion, the city itself would make your job stable by protecting you from competition. But Uber was about to kill that system. Uber drivers just drove without medallions. The company argued that since they were picking up passengers via this newfangled phone app, they didn't need them. Abdiaziz knew that this was going to kill the industry, at least as it currently existed.
Taxi driver would still be a job, but medallion-owning taxi driver would not be. A wave was coming. He knew what he had to do. And so he told his fellow taxi drivers his strategy for dealing with Uber, the company that had come to kill their industry. I tell them, listen, I'm going to join them. I say, I see where they're going. I read a lot of articles about them. They start from San Francisco. They went to Chicago. I say, they are expanding. So we can't stop this beat. We cannot stop Uber. So Abdi Aziz found himself working for Uber. He says someone at the company handed him his new marching orders. We're going to give you a laptop. We're going to give you 200 phones each week. So we want you to give these phones to the drivers that you hire, but we want you to set it up.
They need to bring their driver license. They need to bring their social security. And you sign them up, everyone that you sign, you give them the phone, you activate the phone, they're good to go. So they were giving you 200 iPhones a week to give out? To give out, yeah, to the drivers. So it's crazy, it's like they're kind of, they're coming to kill your business. Exactly, exactly. I knew, I knew, I knew. That's why I said, if you cannot beat them, join them, you know? So I'm going to join them. Abdi Aziz, a man who could glimpse the future clearly enough to adapt to it. He'd work recruiting for Uber for a while. Then he'd be one of the first hundred Uber drivers in Boston. Signed up for Uber Black, the premium service.
Got himself a very expensive car. At first, it was an even better job than the one they'd destroyed. Uber, in those early days, was pretty generous. But after a few years, Abdi Aziz says that started to change. In 2022, Uber began rolling out a big change to its platform.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What experiences shaped Abdi Aziz's views on driverless cars?
0:22–5:48
2
How did Uber's arrival impact the taxi industry in Boston?
5:48–10:04
3
What challenges do unions face with the introduction of autonomous vehicles?
10:04–14:47
4
How are Boston city councilors responding to the threat of driverless cars?
14:47–20:59
5
What unique perspectives do disabled individuals bring to the discussion on autonomous vehicles?
20:59–28:23
6
What arguments are made for and against the regulation of driverless cars?
28:23–34:51
7
How do councilors plan to balance innovation with job protection?
34:51–42:38
8
What does the future hold for driverless cars in Boston?
42:38–1:04:02