Considering the author is invested in this industry, this piece is not an article to begin with but an advertorial promotion. That being said, it’s shocking the degree to which the writer manages to demonstrate both a complete lack of familiarity with sociology and consumer society and common sense.

1. Were the writer’s categorically unempirical observations even all held to be true, the writer assumes that Uber and Lyft are divine entities, incapable of perpetrating what could be in fact far more serious crimes whether through internal corruption or negligence. Uber, Lyft, etc. are for-profit corporations that inherently must work in a very non-transparent manner to negotiate their growth with government agencies and unions.
2. The writer completely looks over the privacy issues the average intelligent citizen would find over all movements of a populace being stored centrally at a time when government surveillance is at best negligent and at worst personal. Believe it or not, the government can perpetrate crimes as well.
3. The writer often speaks about violent crime, and then elsewhere crime in general, without making any sort of distinction between why sometimes the epithet is included other than to appear to be familiar with academic jargon.
4. The writer does not mention that because Uber and Lyft use human drivers, who use their own cars, the companies save a tremendous amount of money in terms of abdicating liability; bearing no responsibility for the maintenance, damage, and eventual obsolescence of their vehicles, not to mention ..protection from theft; while also bearing no responsibility for the health care and long term effects of driving long amounts of time on thousands of people while on the other hand having to assume those obligations for the thousands of white collar workers who will have to centrally manage and maintain these vehicles as directly-employed skilled workers.
5. The writer deserves some diabolical credit for hijacking the term ‘autonomous’ from vehicles driven by a single agent independently, as we currently have, and those controlled by a central corporate entity. Unfortunately, autonomous literally does mean following one’s own laws. Self-driving cars follow the laws of an agent outside of the car that negotiates the needs of the customer with the needs of the traffic system continuously.
6. The kidnapping scenario is so hilarious on its own that I hope anyone who reads this just savors it again.
7. The rest of the elementary school in-class essay notions regarding criminal behavior assume that criminals, not to mention the suddenly included category of behavior commonly known as terrorism, would have no access to the current mode of driving. Is the writer suggesting that because of the appearance of self-driving cars, the government, to the obvious benefit of a couple of for-profit corporations, will seize the property of millions of citizens against the Constitution? A modest proposal indeed.