Having worked in Democratic politics since the Dot Com boom, I can tell you there’s no greater enemy of progress than the NIMBY mentality. Want renewable energy? Want affordable housing? Want health care access? For every policy fix you can imagine, there’s a progressive voter ready to tell their lawmaker, “I support progress...but not in my backyard.”
So it was a surprise when the results of a recent autonomous vehicle (AV) poll came back and found a super-majority of Democratic voters ready to introduce self-driving cars, not just on the roads, but in their own communities.
As Tesla doubles down on its “self driving” claims and lawmakers weigh how to regulate the growing AV industry, our organization, the Chamber of Progress, looked at what voters, especially Democratic voters, feel about the issue.
In a survey conducted from August to September of this year, we found that the NIMBY attitude doesn’t apply to self-driving cars. To our surprise, left-leaning voters were excited about AVs coming to their hometowns and wanted to see lawmakers support AV deployment. The data showed a majority of voters were ready to increase autonomous vehicle testing and deployment and an equal number were ready to ride in an AV either now or in the next five years. More importantly, if you zoom in on Democrats, Biden voters, and even labor union members, support for AVs skyrocketed.
In fact, super majorities of Biden voters and labor union members supported AV testing in their states, compared to about half of the general public.
So, where is the support coming from?
In a surprising reversal of NIMBYism, the most popular reasons for supporting AVs were altruistic. Democrats, in particular, expressed the most interest in the fact that autonomous vehicles increase mobility for communities excluded from driving, including many wheelchair users, the blind, and seniors who are unable to drive themselves. In fact, advocates predict that blind and low-vision people will be one of the largest beneficiaries of widespread autonomous vehicle deployment.
After mobility, Democrats and labor union members were most supportive of AVs' climate benefits. The Environmental Protection Agency lists the transportation sector as the biggest source of carbon pollution in the country, and studies suggest that utilizing electric AV technology and shared vehicle trips could reduce those emissions by 80 percent.
The bottom line is that AVs appeal to progressive values by increasing accessibility and reducing carbon emissions. As a result, AV technology has found major support among Democrats, Biden voters, and labor union members who are energized by the prospect of testing AVs in their own communities.
It's clear that progressive voters back efforts to accelerate AV deployment — but to do so, lawmakers will need to act.
Federal regulations limit the number of custom-built AVs any company can manufacture to 2,500 vehicles. While a few cities like Phoenix and San Francisco have successfully deployed AV trials, the low cap slows the process of bringing these vehicles to market, adding years to the wait for the rest of the country to see their benefits. Meanwhile, challenges like climate change and traffic fatalities aren’t waiting.
So why hasn’t Congress acted? Perhaps it’s lawmakers’ own NIMBYism that’s holding them back.
In my last job, I worked as head of North American government relations at Lime, the shared scooter mobility company, and I saw a lot of the same hangups. While transportation advocates highlighted the many benefits of electric scooters — from easing congestion, to decreasing emissions, to creating more affordable transportation options — lawmakers locked into a NIMBY mindset, fixating on concerns of blocked sidewalks. It’s not that those concerns aren’t legitimate, but they shouldn’t outweigh the benefits that scooters bring to non-driving communities and urban areas.
When it comes to autonomous vehicles, we see that voters are able to escape this mindset and look at the big picture of what AVs can deliver for the United States: more mobility for non-drivers and those living in transportation deserts, lower emissions, and reduced traffic fatalities.
Instead of stalling such a promising technology, federal lawmakers should listen to their constituents and put AVs on the road, right in their own backyards.
Adam Kovacevich is CEO and Founder of the Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org), a new center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology's progressive future. Chamber of Progress corporate partners include Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.