BikeMN supports autonomous vehicles under the right conditions — here’s what those conditions need to look like for all Minnesotans, not just car occupants.
By Erik Noonan
Consider a 68-year-old woman in Crookston who can no longer drive. The nearest bus when she needs it may be counties away. Her chemotherapy appointments depend on family members who can’t always leave work. For her, a safe, reliable autonomous vehicle isn’t a tech novelty. It’s a lifeline.
That’s the promise of this technology, and it’s real. It’s also why BikeMN isn’t calling for Minnesota to simply say no. But promise isn’t policy, and the question before the Legislature isn’t whether autonomous vehicles are impressive. It’s whether they’ll be deployed in a way that works for everyone on the road — including the people with the least protection when something goes wrong.
Today, people walking, biking, and rolling face traffic fatality risk roughly four times higher than people inside cars, and nearly all of that risk comes from drivers. That’s our lens here. Cautiously optimistic about what this technology could do. Clear-eyed about what the evidence shows. And committed to a framework that makes Minnesota’s roads safer for everyone — not just the people paying for the ride.
What We Support
Automated driving systems don’t get intoxicated, tired, distracted, or angry. They can scan 360 degrees hundreds of times per second. Safety improvements can propagate across an entire fleet simultaneously. Waymo’s data through late 2025 — 127 million driverless miles — shows roughly 90% fewer serious-injury crashes than human drivers. That’s a genuinely encouraging number.
The potential matters most for Minnesotans who currently have no good options: rural residents who can no longer drive, people with mobility disabilities in suburbs without paratransit, communities where transit simply doesn’t exist. Disability advocates who testified before the Legislature said autonomous vehicles could help circumvent discrimination their community has experienced from human rideshare drivers. We take that seriously.
We support a cautious, phased-in approach with real oversight — and we’re encouraged by provisions in SF4618 that point in that direction. The bar we’d set: autonomous systems should be the best vehicle operators on the road. Not just as good as the average human driver. Better.
Our Concerns
Protecting people outside the vehicle CAVs are tested and marketed primarily around occupant protection. The people with the least protection in a crash — pedestrians, people on bikes, people using assistive mobility devices — are rarely the central focus. Safety standards need to explicitly measure outcomes for people outside the vehicle, not just inside it. Automated systems must accurately recognize all road users.
One specific ask: we oppose allowing CAVs to stop in bike lanes for passenger pickup and dropoff. Vehicles blocking bike lanes is already a daily hazard for people biking. Normalizing it for autonomous fleets would be a step in the wrong direction at a moment when we should be moving the other way.
Full compliance with the law — as written Some operators have made a deliberate choice to program vehicles to replicate the worst habits of human drivers: rolling stops, failing to yield at crosswalks, edging through construction zones. This isn’t a glitch. It’s an engineering decision, deployed at fleet scale, around the clock, with no individual driver to hold accountable.
Waymo acknowledged that its vehicles predict whether a pedestrian intends to cross rather than simply yielding as the law requires. NHTSA had to open a formal investigation to get them to stop for school buses. When a human driver does these things, there are consequences. When software is programmed to do them simultaneously across thousands of vehicles, there often aren’t. Minnesota should require compliance with traffic law as written — not as the average driver happens to practice it.
Real oversight, not self-certification Every major advance in road safety — seatbelts, airbags, drunk driving laws — came through public pressure and legislation, not industry initiative. In 2023, California suspended Cruise’s permits after a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a vehicle that failed to recognize she was pinned beneath it. The company had withheld the pattern of software behavior from regulators.
We’re encouraged that SF4618 includes incident reporting requirements covering near-misses and pedestrian safety events, not just crashes. That matters. We also believe local governments must retain meaningful authority over operating conditions in their own jurisdictions. Cities know where their school crossings are, where pedestrian injuries cluster, where seasonal conditions change things. A state framework that strips away that knowledge in the name of regulatory efficiency isn’t efficiency. It’s a policy gift to operators.
Disability access built in from the start The Minnesota Council on Disabilities engaged with CAV legislation, and that choice deserves genuine respect — not dismissal, and not the suggestion that disabled Minnesotans should simply wait for better transit first. This community has been promised accessible transportation for decades. The ADA is over thirty years old.
What real access requires in practice: accessible vehicle design from day one, service geography that reaches where disabled Minnesotans actually live, pricing that doesn’t exclude people on fixed incomes, and accountability to disability-led organizations. Any CAV expansion that reduces bus or paratransit ridership without replacing that access would leave the disability community worse off. That’s not a hypothetical risk — it’s a pattern with a history.
Make transit better, not worse AVs should not compete, or even worse, slow public transportation. Public transportation remains the more equitable, sustainable, and affordable option. AVs should not operate in a way that reduces choice transit ridership. AVs must also not add to congestion on transit routes. AVs have the best immediate return in locations that are transit poor or where not transit operates at all. In locations where there is a negative impact on transit ridership the fee structure of AVs should be such that the transit revenues are made whole at the cost of the AV user.
Honest accounting on environment and workforce The clean, green self-driving car is not an automatic outcome. A peer-reviewed study in Nature Communications found that autonomous electric vehicles may emit roughly 8% more greenhouse gases over their full life cycle than non-autonomous electric vehicles, driven by increased manufacturing demands and rebound effects on total travel. Environmental benefit is achievable — but only under specific conditions that don’t emerge from the market on their own. Regulatory preference shouldn’t be granted for benefits not yet demonstrated at scale.
The same principle applies to workers. Rideshare and taxi drivers, truckers, bus operators — these are real jobs, often held by people with limited pathways to equivalent work. Minnesota currently has a statewide bus driver shortage that is actively constraining transit access. Workforce transition planning should be a condition of large-scale deployment. Not a footnote.
What We’re Asking For
Minnesota should require this technology to earn its place — through demonstrated safety for everyone on the road, genuine service to underserved communities, honest environmental accounting, and governance that keeps public interest ahead of private profit.
In practice:
- Independent safety standards that measure outcomes for pedestrians and bicyclists, not just occupants.
- Full legal compliance, enforced.
- Robust incident reporting before expansion, not after harm.
- Local authority that does not reduce equitable access and use should be preserved.
- Disability access designed-in from day one.
- Workforce transition plans treated as a real obligation.
The provisions in SF4618 that move in this direction deserve support. The gaps that remain deserve attention. BikeMN is committed to staying in this conversation — not to slow down technology that could genuinely help Minnesotans, but to make sure it helps all of them.
Minnesota is a national leader in forward-thinking transportation policy — and that didn’t happen by chance. For over 17 years, BikeMN has been at the table, fight after fight, shaping a future where biking, walking, and rolling is safe, accessible, and valued. That work is funded by members like you. Join as a sustaining supporter today at bikemn.org/join — $5 or $10 a month helps ensure Minnesota stays ahead. We all move forward together.
Sources and Additional Reading
- IIHS. Speed cameras reduce injury crashes in Maryland county. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/speed-cameras-reduce-injury-crashes-in-maryland-county-iihs-study-shows
- Guerra & Kovalova (2024). NYC speed camera crash reduction study. Transportation Research Record. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198225000521
- Waymo Safety Impact Dashboard, September 2025. https://waymo.com/safety/impact/
- Fowler, G.A. (2024). Waymo robotaxis often fail to stop for pedestrians. Washington Post, via Planetizen. https://www.planetizen.com/news/2024/12/133519-waymo-robotaxis-often-fail-stop-pedestrians
- NBC News (June 2024). Crossing guards say driverless cars nearly hit them at crosswalks. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/crossing-guards-say-driverless-cars-nearly-hit-crosswalks-rcna156538
- Brookings Institution (July 2024). The evolving safety and policy challenges of self-driving cars. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-evolving-safety-and-policy-challenges-of-self-driving-cars/
- Wei et al. (2023). Rebound effects undermine carbon footprint reduction potential of autonomous electric vehicles. Nature Communications. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41992-2
- Smart Cities Dive (February 2025). Robotaxi environmental costs. https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/robotaxis-environmental-costs-ghg-sustainability/740947/
- MnDOT Safe Systems Approach Implementation Plan. https://www.dot.state.mn.us/safe-system/index.html
- Fortune (February 2026). Tesla robotaxi safety concerns. https://fortune.com/2026/02/18/tesla-robotaxi-safety-concerns-crashes-elon-musk-big-bet/