Uber Crash Proves Cities Are Asleep at the Wheel

The awful news is that one of Uber's self-driving cars hit and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. If anything good is to come from the tragedy, cities need to seize this opportunity to change minds. Right now, while the companies running testbeds in American metropolises are forced to pause, city leaders have a chance to shape the future of autonomous vehicles and ensure they are part of holistic efforts to improve equity and quality of life for all residents. But if politicians simply introduce self-driving cars without conditions, we can expect tragedies on multiple levels. Susan Crawford (@scrawford) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, a professor at Harvard Law School, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, coauthor of The Responsive City, and a longtime columnist and blogger about tech policy.