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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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It just dawned on me that no matter what, we have a wasted seat on self-driving taxis because we still put a wheel and pedals that are expected to go unused in the vehicle. I think this would help highlight just how unsafe this concept really is. With the wheel and pedals there, maybe it’s giving people more of an illusion of control or something, because I feel like having nothing there would make people a lot less comfortable, even though that’s the reality of the situation.
Edit: people keep bringing up ways this could be used, and that we do it for cost-cutting, but this still doesn’t detract from the reality of how they were actually deployed before these concerns were addressed. They’re not even commenting on it and letting the consumer fill in their PR’s gaps for them.
For now. Eventually, it'll just be seats. Maybe some kind of maintenance control, like an outboard motor tiller in the center console, for a worker to operate in testing or repositioning. Or just a USB port to plug in an Xbox controller.
I'd be more comfortable if the self-driving vehicle I was riding in had a way for me to take direct control in case of emergencies.
Not having a wheel or pedals to actually control the vehicle in case of emergency gets you situations like in the article.
Of course that would require either someone sitting in the driver's seat, or making it easy to get into the driver's seat.
They’re retrofitting existing cars. Leaving the steering wheel and pedals means they don’t spend money removing them. It also means they can remove the lidar bolt ons, and resell them as normal used cars later.
For more than three passengers, they’ll probably retrofit a larger vehicle like a van or an suv.
With a wheel a shifter, and pedals, you can put the vehicle in neutral and push it out of the road if it dies or something. It doesn't make sense to get rid of them.
The idea is that you can do both manual and automated driving with one vehicle.