Minneapolis proposes a bold compromise: Autonomous vehicles may operate as long as they are no longer autonomous.
The Minneapolis City Council may have solved the problem of driverless cars.
Make them have drivers.
Four council members have proposed an ordinance requiring every autonomous vehicle operating in Minneapolis to carry a “safety monitor.” That monitor must possess a driver’s license and have “immediate access to controls for steering, braking and acceleration,” according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
There used to be a shorter name for someone who sits behind the wheel, watches the road and can steer, brake and accelerate.
A driver.
But calling this person a driver would give away the game. The proposal is not really about regulating autonomous vehicles. It is about making autonomous vehicles operate like conventional ones—and preserving the job that makes them conventional.
The ordinance’s authors—Council Members Robin Wonsley, Aurin Chowdhury and Jason Chavez and Council Vice President Jamal Osman—say the requirement would protect public safety and immigrant workers. Autonomous vehicles, they warn, could cause crashes, disrupt traffic, undermine city transportation goals and eliminate thousands of driving jobs.
Those are fair subjects for public debate. Autonomous vehicles should not receive a free pass simply because the technology is new. Minneapolis has every reason to ask how they perform in snow, respond to emergency vehicles, handle construction zones and interact with pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. The city can reasonably consider licensing, insurance, crash reporting, data disclosure and emergency-response requirements.
But none of those questions explains why an autonomous vehicle must carry a human driver at all times.
If the technology cannot operate safely, establish a safety standard it must meet. If the companies cannot meet that standard, do not license them. If additional testing is needed before passengers are allowed, specify the tests and the results required.
That is regulation.
Requiring a driver in a driverless car is something else.
Waymo calls the proposal a “de facto ban.” That description is difficult to dispute. Removing the driver is not a minor feature of an autonomous taxi. It is the central purpose of the product. A rule requiring every vehicle to employ a human driver does not make autonomous transportation safer at the margins. It eliminates the operating model.
Minneapolis could apply the same reasoning elsewhere. Self-checkout stations could be permitted as long as a cashier scans every item. Automatic doors could be approved if an attendant opens them by hand. Online banking could continue provided that every transaction is performed by a teller.
The council members might even describe those requirements as groundbreaking nationally.
The wage provision makes the ordinance’s purpose clearer. The required monitor must be paid at least the minimum wage.
Safe equipment standards matter. Driver qualifications matter. Insurance matters. A worker’s hourly wage has no effect on whether a vehicle recognizes a red light or stops for a pedestrian.
It does affect whether operating that vehicle remains economically feasible.
The concern for rideshare drivers is understandable. More than 10,000 people drive for rideshare companies in Minnesota, according to a 2024 state study cited by the Star Tribune. Many are low-income immigrants, and autonomous vehicles may eventually threaten their livelihoods.
But technological change has been eliminating some jobs and creating others for centuries. Government cannot protect every occupation by requiring new technology to retain the labor it was designed to replace.
That lesson should be especially familiar here. Uber and Lyft disrupted the taxi industry and threatened the livelihoods of established taxi drivers. Rideshare drivers are now the established workforce, and another technology threatens them. Yesterday’s disruptors have become today’s incumbents.
None of that means displaced workers should simply be forgotten. Government can help people retrain, acquire new skills and move into occupations with a future. It can phase in major changes and ensure that workers have time to adapt. It can enforce labor laws and prevent companies from shifting legitimate costs onto the public.
What government cannot do indefinitely is preserve the present by pretending the future has not arrived.
The City Council should decide what it is actually trying to accomplish. If the goal is public safety, members should write measurable safety requirements and require autonomous-vehicle companies to meet them. If the goal is protecting rideshare jobs from automation, they should say so plainly and defend that policy honestly.
And if the goal is to keep autonomous vehicles out of Minneapolis, they should propose a ban and accept responsibility for it.
Instead, the council has produced something easier to market: a ban that can be called regulation, a labor-protection measure that can be called public safety and a driver who can be called a safety monitor.
Minneapolis may not be able to stop the arrival of driverless cars.
But apparently it can require them to bring a driver.
https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/09/17/minneapolis-weighs-ban-on-driverless-robotaxis-to-protect-rideshare-drivers/
Excerpt…
A spokeswoman for Frey said the mayor “considers this proposal a back-door ban, and a bait for the state to come in and preempt us.”
This DSA infused voting block on the Council has once again been busy creating this illusion/ this scheme, in hopes that no one will notice the contortions required, as they suggest that their primary opposition to this new technology is related to public safety concerns.
Opinion | Waymo could cost thousands their jobs. We want to change that.
https://www.startribune.com/driverless-cars-twin-cities-market-waymo-uber-transit/601889606?utm_source=gift_email
I am barely old enough, but I *do* remember, growing up in the Chicago area, that when one got in an elevator in a downtown department store, the nice man (in a uniform!) in the car would ask you what floor you wanted, and would even advise you as to what goods were displayed on which floors. Then, for a bit, that custom was preserved in some locations while going away in others. Where it was preserved, it was said to be about safety. Was it really safer? Well, I later had an “uncle-in-law” who worked for Otis Elevator, and he told me that with old-enough elevators, it *was* safer – but that you really didn’t want to be on those elevators anyway! That’s why they were all replaced or retrofitted over a very short period of time with more modern ones that did not require an operator for safety’s sake – and we all had to learn how to push a button with a number on it.
So it is with automobiles. The Council foursome is fighting a battle it cannot – or at least should not – win. Uber/Lyft employment is doomed. We need to focus on making sure implementation of driverless automobiles is properly regulated, appropriately timed, etc. AND we need to focus on what other kinds of employment can be encouraged, so as to absorb those drivers who will be displaced. But the handwriting is already on the wall that implementation is nigh.
Oh! I’m also old enough to remember when it was illegal to pump your own gas. A guy – once again, in a uniform! – did it for you, and as he greeted you, he asked you politely if you also wanted him to check your oil and wash your windows! (…and, yes!, you DID!) Today, only New Jersey persists in making it illegal for you to pump your own gas.
Occasionally, someone writes a piece for some media outlet making fun of New Jersey for being such a bunch of Neanderthals. An outcome worth considering before going much further with the “driver in a driverless auto” idea, here.
Very seldom does this cast of characters, this specific voting block on the council, tell THE TRUTH about WHY they are doing or are not doing certain things, but we all know exactly what they are up to. We see this same playbook used on ALL things public safety, with just about anything to do with the MPD.
They lack professional integrity, but here in Mpls, they keep getting away with this. Personally, I am embarrassed by them, AND the folks that put them in charge.
What I REALLY could’ve used, coming back from a concert a couple weeks ago, was a safety monitor for my Uber driver.
Hello, veto.