Tesla robotaxis finally running driverless in Austin — no safety driver, no seatbelt

Tesla started its first fully driverless robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. No safety operator. No seatbelts. The Cybercab rolls around the city without anyone in the front seat. It's the first time a car has gone public without a human backup.

The service launched this week after months of testing with safety drivers riding along. Tesla says the Cybercab can handle city streets, intersections, and pedestrians on its own. The company is positioning this as a stepping stone toward full autonomy — the kind of thing regulators have been cautious about for years.

This is a big deal because it's the first real-world deployment of a fully driverless vehicle on public roads at scale. Previous attempts — Waymo in parts of Phoenix, Cruise before it shut down, Baidu in China — all kept safety drivers in place or limited the zones where they operate. Tesla is betting that people will ride in a car with no one in the front seat. If it works, the whole taxi industry has a problem. If it doesn't, the regulators will step in hard.

The bigger question is what happens when something goes wrong. Who's liable? Does Tesla's insurance cover it? How do police handle a car that's driving itself through a neighborhood? And what about the thousands of drivers who will lose their jobs if this scales?

Why this matters for us: Our families who drive Ubers, Lyfts, and door dashers need to know this is coming whether they're ready for it or not — and the people making the rules right now don't have a plan for them.