Can Bike Riders and Self-Driving Cars Be Friends?

Los Angeles is a car city, and it’s rarely more obvious than from a vulnerable perch on top of a bicycle. Among big cities in the US, LA has a middling-to-bad reputation for bike riding. A lack of connected cycling lanes and safe crossings led one national cycling advocacy organization to recently rank LA’s bike network 1,136th in the nation. The city’s auto leanings are inscribed on its infrastructure—with deadly consequences. According to one local outlet, at least 12 Angelenos have died while riding this year.

So it’s surprising that Eli Akira Kaufman, the executive director of the LA county cycling advocacy group BikeLA, is pretty excited about a car. Specifically, a car driven by a robot.

For more than a year now, the Alphabet subsidiary Waymo has been picking up riders in the western half of the city. Kaufman likes what he sees ...