In 1900, Fifth Avenue on Easter morning was a sea of horses. And every day, those horses left 2.5 million pounds of manure behind in the city.

There was maybe one car on the street.

By 1913, that same street had a traffic jam. A decade later, the horses were largely gone.

That’s how quickly things can change. And when they do change, they quickly become normal. 

When people stepped into the first driverless elevators, they looked around and walked right back out. “Where’s the operator?”

Today, you’d be startled to find one.

Every generation walks around with an implicit assumption: things are going to stay pretty much the same. The horse. The iceman. The elevator operator. Then one technology shows up and the “normal” everyone grew up with is gone within a decade.

We’re at that moment again.

The Robotaxi is Here 

Right now, in Texas, a car with no driver is picking up a stranger. Tesla runs unsupervised Robotaxis in Austin, Dallas and Houston. Cybercabs with no steering wheel are already rolling.

And this is coming fast.

Waymo’s paid rides grew tenfold in under two years. Goldman Sachs expects 6 million robotaxis on the road by 2035. Morgan Stanley expects about 30% of U.S. ride-share miles to be driverless by 2032.

And here’s the thing… 

For a century, we’ve paid a hidden tax for being human behind the wheel. Crashes. Tickets. Parking. Payments on a machine that sits still all day.

Robotaxis start the refund.

Today, let’s follow it. Six places it shows up first: the ER, the police blotter, the airport, your parents’ driveway, your garage and downtown.

Buckle up. The car insists.

1. Crashes become rarer.

For all the fear of cars in 1900, New York’s streets got safer. Per person, horses killed about 75% more New Yorkers in 1900 than cars did a century later. 

Similarly, Swiss Re studied 25.3 million Waymo miles. Human drivers would have filed 78 property damage claims over that distance. Waymo filed nine. They’ll only get better.

A.] Fewer crashes.
B.] Fewer ER visits. Fewer funerals.
C.] Insurance gets cheaper, then folds into the fare.
D.] Fewer claims. Fewer body-shop visits. Fewer weeks in a rental.

2. Policing gets better.

America’s first speeding arrest came in 1899: a New York cabbie doing 12 miles an hour, chased down by a cop on a bicycle. A century of traffic stops followed.

Big cities pull nearly $5 billion a year from parking, tickets, cameras and towing.

But a robot never speeds.

A.] Traffic stops fade.
B.] Officers get hours back.
C.] Those hours go to real crime.
D.] Cities fund themselves with visible, honest fees.

Traffic stops are the most common way Americans come into contact with police. Fewer stops means fewer tense encounters, fewer court dates and fewer fines that snowball for people who can’t pay. Cops get to be detectives again.

Of course, cities still need the money. Expect the speeding ticket to come back as a per-mile fee. Oregon is already charging some drivers by the mile.

3. Airports get a second life.

In 1907, Manhattan had 681 livery stables. By 1926, almost all were gone, and many had become parking garages. Buildings outlive the vehicles they were built for.

Des Moines just built a $49 million parking garage. Its airport CEO already worries robotaxis could cut into parking, about a third of that airport's revenue.

Smart airports will flip it.

A.] Garages become robotaxi depots and charging hubs.
B.] Surface lots become hotels and cargo space.
C.] The curbside scrum disappears.
D.] You walk off the plane and into a car that's already waiting. Even if it’s your car.

Some designers have already sketched this out. Seattle’s 13,000-space airport garage becomes home base for a fleet of electric robotaxis. The airport stops renting parking spaces and starts running rides.

4. Seniors keep their freedom.

The elevator let people who couldn’t manage stairs keep living on the fifth floor. Robotaxis do the same for people who can’t manage the wheel.

Every family dreads the conversation. Somebody has to take the keys. Studies show what happens. When seniors stop driving, their circle of friends and family shrinks by half. Their risk of depression nearly doubles.

With autonomous vehicles, seniors stay in their homes longer. They still go to dinner, church and the grandkids' games. They stay connected.

That might be the most valuable thing on this list.

5. Your car gets a job.

AAA says the average new car costs $1,072 a month to own and run. It sits idle about 90% of the time. If you had an employee who cost $1,072 a month and showed up two and a half hours a day, you’d fire him.

Robotaxis give him a full shift. Tesla says its network will eventually work with cars people already own.

A.] Your car earns fares while you sleep.
B.] The fares pay down the loan.
C.] Buying a car starts to look like buying a rental property.
D.] And if you'd rather not own one, rides get cheap enough that you don't have to.

In the 1800s, farmers hired out their idle workhorses to the winter ice harvest. Same idea, new horse.

6. Parking lots become neighborhoods.

America has somewhere between 700 million and 2 billion parking spaces. Up to seven for every car. Add it up and parking covers an area bigger than Puerto Rico.

When cars stop idling, that land wakes up. Lots become apartments. Garages become markets. Downtowns come alive again. More spaces are built for humans again. 

The Dutch pumped out the sea and built a country on the seabed. Parking scholar Donald Shoup says we can do the same with our parking lots.

7. Even the animals win.

An estimated 1 million animals die on American roads every day. Squirrels. Raccoons. Skunks. Deer.

1 MILLION. EVERY. DAY. 

The deer hit back. Deer crashes kill an estimated 150 to 440 Americans a year, usually when a startled driver swerves. 

A.] Robotaxis see in the dark, when animals move.
B.] They react in milliseconds.
C.] They don’t swerve in a panic.
D.] Whether they brake for a raccoon is a software choice. And software can be changed. 

Since the cars will communicate with each other, they can all signal animals in the road. Today, most self-driving systems are built to dodge the moose. The next step is teaching them to care about the squirrel.

The Robotaxi Refund

Some will say this is too optimistic. Fair. Plenty could go wrong.

But look back at the list. Every new machine scared people. The car. The elevator. The refrigerator. Each one left us safer, richer and freer than the people who feared it predicted.

Bad news gets the airtime. In a test of more than 105,000 headlines, every negative word drew more clicks. The caveman who yelled “TIGER!” drew a crowd. The guy who said “what if we rode the horse?” drew a map. Pessimists get headlines. Optimists get the future.

Some industries will shrink. Buggy-whip makers hated the Model T too.

But the rest of us get our time and money back. 

Yes… most of this is years away. But it’s not that far off. 

Goldman Sachs expects the global robotaxi fleet to grow more than 100-fold by 2030. Every robotaxi needs chips, sensors and maps. Whoever wins the race, the suppliers get paid. The parts get ordered years before the cars hit the road.

That’s now.

Stay tuned for part two.