Driverless taxis have been quietly learning London's streets for months. Last week, the people whose jobs they could replace turned up on the doorstep. Around 15 demonstrators, including members of the App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU) and the GMB, protested outside the King's Cross offices of Wayve, the British self-driving company trialling vehicles in the capital with Uber.
What the drivers are worried about
Their concerns fall into three groups: safety, congestion and jobs. Abdurzak Hadi, a private hire driver and ADCU member, told the BBC he was worried about being "forced to compete with a machine that can work 24 hours". He wants Transport for London to suspend licences for driverless vehicles until there is more clarity, and complained that ordinary drivers had not been told what the trials mean for them.
Priyanka Khurana of the campaign group Fare Free London argued that robotaxis simply add more cars to already crowded roads, when the city should be investing in buses. And James Rossi, a GMB representative and London bus driver, struck a more measured note: "We're not here to stop artificial intelligence. What we want is assurances." He wants the companies behind the technology to help pay to retrain workers who lose their jobs.
Who decides?
The protest follows a London Assembly Transport Committee report that warned driverless taxis could worsen congestion and threaten jobs, and called for TfL to be given stronger powers to regulate the industry. For now, TfL says safety is its top priority and that "any automated passenger service in London can only operate with TfL's consent."
Wayve, for its part, says it is taking a "deliberately phased approach" with Uber, learning from supervised operations with human safety drivers on board, and working with TfL to fit in with the Mayor's Transport Strategy. Waymo, the Google sister company, is also testing on London roads.
Our take
Fifteen people outside an office is not a mass movement. But it is the first time London's robotaxi story has had an organised opposition, and history suggests that is where the real negotiation starts. The likely outcome is not a ban, but conditions: limits on fleet sizes, data sharing with TfL, and pressure on operators to fund retraining. The drivers' ask for "assurances" may be the most realistic demand in the whole debate.