{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/taxi-drivers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Taxi Drivers",
    "soc_code": "53-3054",
    "category": "Transportation",
    "us_employment": 41050,
    "median_annual_wage": 42100
  },
  "verdict": "COOKED",
  "risk_resistance": 32,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": true,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 6,
    "embodiment": 11,
    "liability_shield": 5,
    "trust_premium": 6,
    "judgment_accountability": 4
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Fare metering, dispatch acceptance, GPS routing and lane-keeping are all shipped features in a Waymo or Zoox vehicle today, which puts this at 6 rather than 0 only because curbside pickup in double-parked traffic, loading a folded wheelchair into a trunk, and dealing with a passenger who vomits or won't get out still need hands.",
    "embodiment": "You are in a vehicle on public roads all shift — lifting suitcases, assisting elderly riders in and out, occasionally shoveling snow off the hood — but the road itself is mapped, signed, and geometrically constrained, which is why this sits at 11 instead of the 16+ of a lineman on a pole or a plumber under a house.",
    "liability_shield": "A chauffeur endorsement or TLC hack licence is a city permit with a background check and a medical, not a professional licence that makes you personally answerable for an outcome; the fleet's commercial policy and the TNC's insurance absorb the claim, so at 5 the paperwork barely slows a driverless competitor down.",
    "trust_premium": "Street hails and app dispatch are anonymous by design and the passenger is rating a 5-minute interaction, which caps this at 6 — the points come from the minority of the trade with a repeat book: the hotel doorman's regular, the standing dialysis run, the school contract where the parent wants the same face every morning.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Route choice, when to refuse an intoxicated fare, and how to handle a no-show are governed by company policy, meter rules, and municipal regs, and a supervisor or the app resolves disputes — the discretion is real but small-stakes and reversible, hence 4."
  },
  "rationale": "The core task — driving a passenger from A to B, plus fare calculation, routing, and dispatch response — is the single task the AV industry has spent $100B+ to automate, and Waymo already runs paid driverless rides at scale in Phoenix, SF, LA, and Austin. Embodiment normally protects, but here the robot is the product: a car on mapped urban roads is a far easier physical problem than a crawl space or an ICU. What survives near-term is the human-contact residue: wheelchair and stretcher assistance, luggage, unaccompanied minors, medical transport, and airport/hotel runs where a named driver with a phone number is the service.",
  "outlook": "Driverless fleets will take most dense-urban ride volume within a decade; the taxi jobs left will be assistance-heavy medical, paratransit, and rural work, at materially lower headcount.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "A state statute requiring a licensed human operator in any commercial passenger AV — California AB 316 (Teamsters-backed) passed the legislature in 2023 and was vetoed by Newsom; a re-passed version surviving veto, or a similar bill in NY/MA/IL, would convert the driver into a legally mandated seat-holder. Watch also NYC TLC's AV permit rule, which currently requires a licensed safety driver behind the wheel for testing.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 7
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State Medicaid NEMT rules or CMS guidance requiring a credentialed attendant (CPR, PASS/wheelchair-securement certified) physically present for stretcher and wheelchair transports, with that attendant named on the trip record — making the human, not the vehicle vendor, the liable party for the passenger's condition in transit.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: if curb-to-curb mapped-road trips go driverless first, the residual paid work is the tier AVs handle badly — wheelchair securement, stretcher loading, unaccompanied minors, dialysis and discharge runs, and door-through-door assistance under ADA paratransit contracts. This raises task resistance without any new law, but only for the fraction of the workforce holding those contracts.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Growth of the WAV/paratransit share of the occupation: ramp deployment, four-point tiedowns, transfers, and stair assistance in unpredictable residential settings are physical work no current AV fleet performs. FTA ADA complementary paratransit requirements and city WAV mandates (e.g., TLC's WAV dispatch percentage) keep this demand contractual rather than optional.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Narrow but real: buyers who specifically pay for a named human — school-district contracts for unaccompanied minors, executive/black-car accounts where the same driver is assigned, and hospital discharge transport where a family requests a person. Verifiable as a price gap between a Waymo fare and a booked human car service on the same route.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If medical-transport contracts formalize the driver as the person who decides whether a patient is fit to travel, when to divert to an ED, and whether a minor may be released to a given adult — with that call logged and auditable — the role owns consequential ambiguous decisions rather than executing a dispatch.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Even with every lever, this occupation's ceiling is low and the gains are concentrated in the paratransit/NEMT/medical-escort slice, not general street-hail or app taxi work. A safety-driver mandate is the only lever large enough to matter at scale, and it is a single legislative fight that has already been lost once in California; it also decays over time as AV safety records accumulate. The A-to-B core task is gone in permitted metros and no institutional lever brings it back."
  },
  "adjudication": {
    "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict",
    "outcome": "corroborated",
    "run_totals": [
      32,
      31
    ],
    "run_verdicts": [
      "COOKED",
      "COOKED"
    ]
  },
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 13950,
        "wage": 29310
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 13820,
        "wage": 30670
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 17770,
        "wage": 34680
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 17510,
        "wage": 36220
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 41050,
        "wage": 42100
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 194.3,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}