Waymo, a leader in self-driving cars, is seeking permission to roll out its AI-driven taxi in New York City, with a safety driver behind the wheel at all times. Before saying yes, the city must put on several guardrails, from limiting the number of vehicles, to where they can operate, to their safety and technical information.

Fully self-driving robotaxis — with no human behind the wheel — are in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, and San Francisco, providing more than a quarter of a million paid rides a week. They’re primarily run by Waymo, a company under the Google-Alphabet umbrella. Waymo has plans to expand to Atlanta, Miami, Washington, Las Vegas and beyond.

New York City is different, to be sure. We’re a pedestrian-first city with narrow streets where there’s a constant, delicate ballet of bikes, e-bikes, mopeds, double-parked trucks, buses and more. That’s before one even begins factoring in weather conditions that are much more complex than anything in those other sunnier climes.

Already in easier cities, self-driving cars have stumbled into construction zones, blocked ambulances and made some other fateful mistakes. Since the level of difficulty for a self-driving vehicle here is orders of magnitude higher than it is in the Bay Area, we’re likely to see more foul-ups here than elsewhere, even as the technology improves.

New York must insist that Waymos cannot add to congestion that congestion pricing is trying to curb. Before adding any new cars to the streets, other Ubers and Lyfts must be removed from service. Furthermore, the test areas for Waymos also cannot include those sections crowded with pedestrians and other vehicles, but some of the less traveled parts of the city. And the safety and technical data for Waymo must be shared with city regulators.

Robotaxis aren’t flawless, but neither are humans. And cars equipped with tons of sensors are less likely to get distracted, less likely to speed, less likely to fail to see someone crossing in their path in the twilight hours.

If Waymo puts its cars to the test with a person behind the wheel, not too far down the road, leaders will have to make a fateful decision about how and under what conditions to allow self-driving taxis or private cars to operate in New York State and City. Right now, there are significant restrictions at both the state and city level.

There have been people killed by these things around the country. That cannot happen here.

Uber and taxi drivers already struggle to make a living; self-driving vehicles would put their jobs directly in the crosshairs. When Uber rolled into New York City in the first place, it flooded the streets with thousands of cars, essentially daring regulators to catch up and try to force the genie back in the bottle. We don’t want to repeat that failure in good governance.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Today, Waymo is simply asking whether it can test out a promising new technology in New York City, which is the nation’s second-biggest tech hub. Provided it’s done with maximum safety, let them ride.

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