{"text":[[{"start":5.6,"text":"A large part of me cannot wait for robotaxis to take over."}],[{"start":9.48,"text":"This is the part that sees a day when I have grown too feeble to drive but still have the wherewithal to summon a driverless car so I can visit friends, go shopping or simply tool around outside for a few hours."}],[{"start":21.76,"text":"I also like the idea of robotaxis slashing the use of privately owned cars that typically sit parked for more than 90 per cent of the time, hogging as much as a third of city land."}],[{"start":32.76,"text":"But the arrival of self-driving taxis in London this month is a reminder that the outlook is bleaker for the city’s nearly 15,000 black cab drivers and their 105,000 private-hire counterparts."}],[{"start":45.04,"text":"If robots take those jobs, they will kill a multitude of benefits that are not always obvious to those of us in the back seat. This is especially true for one group of workers: immigrants."}],[{"start":55.98,"text":"It is no accident that newcomers account for a large share of taxi drivers in countries across Europe and North America. It’s one of the fastest ways to earn money while building a new life."}],[{"start":67.16,"text":"A recent study from Sweden, where more than 60 per cent of taxi drivers are foreign-born, showed immigrants’ monthly income jumped by nearly 50 per cent after they passed a written taxi-driving exam."}],[{"start":78.72,"text":"At the same time, their dependence on social welfare dropped sharply. The share of these workers who were claiming benefits fell by 25 per cent after they qualified."}],[{"start":88.7,"text":"But taxi driving is also important for immigrants because it lets you work flexibly, at days and times that suit. Many people arrive in a new country with a poor grasp of the local language and without qualifications that employers readily recognise. It’s much easier to study or train if you are a cab driver without the fixed shifts of, say, an office cleaner or dishwasher."}],[{"start":111.48,"text":"Economists are generally wary of suggesting that new technologies automatically condemn a whole class of workers to unemployment. In theory, new work is found elsewhere."}],[{"start":120.84,"text":"“But that is the optimistic take,” says Mounir Karadja, a co-author of the Swedish study. Immigrants are already struggling with higher unemployment rates in many EU countries, he told me. And they are not the only workers at risk. The white men without university degrees who drive so many trucks across the US are highly exposed to the robotrucks already being tested in places like Texas."}],[{"start":143.84,"text":"Because driverless vehicles are relatively new, the impact on workers is only starting to be quantified, but the news so far is decidedly mixed."}],[{"start":152.64,"text":"A paper published in April by a group of Chinese and US researchers looks at Wuhan, one of the world’s largest autonomous vehicle testing grounds. It’s where tech giant Baidu in 2022 launched Apollo Go, a taxi service without any human drivers."}],[{"start":167.68,"text":"After making more than 200,000 daily observations of traditional taxi drivers in 2024, the researchers found their average daily income dropped by 11 per cent after robotaxis arrived. In addition, drivers worked longer, became more stressed and unhappy, and started looking for new jobs."}],[{"start":184.92,"text":"Other Wuhan residents must have been stressed in April when a mass robotaxi outage in the city caused at least 100 driverless cars to abruptly come to a halt in the middle of roads. A similar thing happened in San Francisco five months earlier, when a power outage stopped self-driving taxis around the city."}],[{"start":201.68,"text":"San Francisco is also one of several US cities where taxi drivers’ pay per trip fell after robotaxis landed, a separate report shows."}],[{"start":210,"text":"Modelling by other researchers suggests robotaxis could eventually cut frontline driving jobs by up to 76 per cent, but the news is not uniformly awful."}],[{"start":219.96,"text":"Driverless cars still need to be cleaned, maintained and repositioned, and this is what human drivers are starting to do in Nashville, where Lyft has started to offer Waymo robotaxi rides through its app."}],[{"start":230.62,"text":"Half the 72 workers in one Lyft operations depot are reportedly former drivers, which is pleasing. These jobs offer stability and potentially more money."}],[{"start":240.52,"text":"But we should not kid ourselves. Robotaxis could eliminate a far greater number of jobs that offer more value than widely realised."}],[{"start":248.004,"text":"Some US cities are already looking at taxing driverless vehicle operators and using the proceeds to help taxi drivers retrain for new jobs. That’s a good start, but a lot more authorities need to follow them."}],[{"start":261.32,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789902673_4969.mp3"}