For immediate release
Metro DC DSA Urges DC Council to Put Working People Before Autonomous Vehicle Companies
Date: May 29, 2026
Media Contact: For all press inquiries, please contact media@mdcdsa.org.
Washington, DC: On May 4, the text for Councilmember Charles Allen’s Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Authorization Amendment Act of 2026 was published. Allen’s bill begins round two of Waymo’s campaign to profit off of our city’s streets after their last industry-written bill, put forward by former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, completely collapsed in July of last year.
In its current form, this bill risks paving the way to the future it says it wants to avoid. It threatens the livelihoods of thousands of DC workers, risks wasting the time of hundreds of thousands more in worsened traffic, explicitly permits yet another form of surveillance technology on our streets, and leaves any potential safety benefits in the hands of the people who own the software, not The People who own the streets.
Neither the auto industry—the driving force behind our country’s deadly, inaccessible, and inequitable transportation system—nor big tech—the nation’s prime innovator in exploiting workers—should be in the driver’s seat of DC’s transportation future. DC residents need better transit and paratransit, traffic calmed permanently with changes to pavement (not paint or software), and social policies that protect people from exploitation on the road and at their destinations.
Metro DC DSA is organizing with our labor and community partners to stop undemocratic tech giants like Waymo from suffocating our streets for profit. To that end, Metro DC DSA urges Councilmember Allen to lean on his record of championing public transit and safe streets to prioritize the working people of DC, not AV companies.