Robotaxis can’t tell you where to find the best prime rib in Cody, Wyoming. They can’t regale passengers with stories about wildlife and geysers as they shuttle riders from one side of Yellowstone National Park to the other.
And on winter days, when friends and neighbors get their vehicles stuck in the snow, robotaxis will not stop to lend a hand.
"You lose the interaction. You lose the social aspect. You lose the ability to look at somebody and have them feel safe," said Earl Farlow about the rise of self-driving taxi services.
Farlow was born and raised in Cody and now drives for Cody Cab.
While robotaxis have been expanding operations in urban areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, Texas, they remain more of a concept on the horizon than something you call when you don’t want to drive home from the Silver Dollar Bar after a few drinks with friends.
In the past week, Tesla’s new robotaxi service in Austin has drawn national attention for a series of embarrassing mistakes caught on video and widely shared online.
Early riders and bystanders documented incidents where the self-driving Teslas entered the wrong lane of roads and drove into oncoming traffic. They’ve dropped passengers off in the middle of busy multilane roads or at intersections, while also braking erratically and running over curbs.
The emerging self-driving vehicle industry explains Tesla and Waymo are working out the kinks.
Even when those kinks are ironed out, the industry’s most difficult challenge will remain the apathy some people feel toward self-driving vehicles.
A 2025 AAA poll shows that only 13% of people in the United States say they trust riding in self-driving vehicles, while 61% say they’re afraid of them.
Cutting The Red Tape
It also predicts Farlow’s job driving taxi won’t be replaced by a driverless cab anytime soon because Wyoming isn’t the ideal place to beta test this new technology.
It might be another decade before Farlow pulls up to the intersection at Sheridan Avenue and 16th Street and sees a driverless cab in the other lane.
Downtown Denver might be the closest place to Wyoming that sees the arrival of robotaxis, but they aren’t there yet.
Even though her home state isn’t primed for service by robotaxis, Wyoming Republican U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis is pushing federal legislation designed to speed up deployment of autonomous vehicles nationwide.
In May, she introduced the Autonomous Vehicle Advancement Act, which aims to cut through regulatory red tape and establish clearer pathways for getting self-driving cars on American roads, according the senator’s office.
"For nearly a decade, Washington has talked about autonomous vehicles without meaningful action," Lummis said in a prepared statement. "This legislation cuts through the red tape and establishes a clear path forward for getting safe autonomous vehicles on American roads where they can save lives, create jobs and maintain our technological leadership."
The bill has been referred to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee for review.
Lummis spokesperson Joe Jackson told Cowboy State Daily the legislation focuses on safety above all else.
"The bill does just that by requiring that autonomous vehicles are as safe or more safe than human drivers on the road," Jackson said. "Safety is the most important aspect in this discussion."
The legislation uses performance-based standards, added Jackson, meaning if real-world accident outcomes aren't better than human drivers, those deploying driverless taxis could face civil penalties from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Or they could play it safe and just call a human cabbie like Farlow.
"I get to see the people of my small community and take care of people and help them out, and it allows me to make a living," said Farlow, a Navy veteran. "It don't make me rich, but it allows me to make a living here in my home."
About Those Wyoming Winters
Sam Abuelsamid is an automotive technology analyst and expert, currently serving as vice president of market research at Telemetry, a Michigan firm specializing in automotive intelligence and analysis.
He is widely cited in the media for his expertise on autonomous vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems, and he told Cowboy State Daily that Wyoming appears to be far from having robotaxis.
"The places where robotaxis are deployed today are all relatively dense urban areas where there is a significant demand for rides," said Abuelsamid, who has been riding in autonomous vehicles since 2008 and has tested systems from multiple companies.
"None of these systems work in really bad weather,” he said. “In wintertime in Jackson Hole, when it's snowing, none of these systems are capable of operating in those conditions today.”
Companies like Waymo operate the largest fleets of autonomous vehicles, providing more than 250,000 paid rides per week across cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
The vehicles work similarly to Uber or Lyft. Passengers request rides through an app, unlock the vehicle with a code or biometric authentication, and are taken to their destinations without a human driver.
Abuelsamid said robotaxis rarely travel over 45 mph.
The vehicles are equipped with cameras and sensors that monitor passengers, and riders can be charged cleaning fees for smoking or getting car sick.
The sensors can sense when they need to be cleaned and automatically drive themselves back to the shop. The offending passenger can then be assessed a cleaning fee.
As for the recent miscues made by robotaxis in Austin, Abuelsamid said companies like Tesla continue to work out the kinks.
"We can make automated driving systems that can work safer, more reliably than humans under certain very specific conditions," Abuelsamid said. "But we're still quite a ways away from really having systems that are capable of consistently and reliably operating safer than human drivers."
The numbers bear this out.
Americans drive 3.2 trillion miles per year with roughly 6.5 million crashes. That’s about one crash every 500,000 miles, or once every 30 years for the average driver.
No autonomous system has yet achieved that level of reliability across varied conditions, he said.
Wyoming Roads
For Wyoming specifically, Abuelsamid identified several barriers that make the state unlikely to see robotaxis soon. Beyond weather challenges, the financials remain unproven even in ideal conditions.
"Right now, no one has yet figured out a viable business model for actually operating these systems profitably," he said, noting that General Motors shut down its Cruise robotaxi division and Ford ended its Argo AI program due to business model concerns.
In a market like Jackson, where wealthy tourists might pay premium prices, the economics could theoretically work despite low utilization rates, he said.
"But you still have the technical challenge of operating in winter weather conditions, which no one has really overcome yet,” added Abuelsamid.
For rural Wyoming, a different type of autonomous technology may arrive first.
"You're likely to see things like automated highway driving long before you probably see robotaxis in Bozeman or Jackson," Abuelsamid said, touching on technology that lets a vehicle drive itself while a human driver remains behind the wheel.
That’s already available in several makes and models of vehicles.
The debate over autonomous vehicles highlights fundamental questions about what's lost when human drivers are removed from the equation.
Farlow in Cody remains skeptical about auto-driving replacing human drivers in rural areas and small towns, where the personal connection and local knowledge might matter to some as much as the ride itself.
"I think anything that is going to take jobs and money away from the residents here in Wyoming is not a good thing," Farlow said. "Just like when they pushed through Uber and such, a lot of jobs and money went away from the local people that were trying to make a living here in Wyoming."
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
