I remember reading early in the program that they had to keep a human back up behind the wheel, is that still the case or are these rides with no human behind the wheel?
While I totally agree and have known a number of Taxi drivers through the years, in the early 1900's every city town hamlet had one or more blacksmiths shoeing horses and keeping the wagons rolling, the AutoMoBile put most of them out of work.
It's evolution and has been going on with the work force since early man figured out how to get a horse to pull his crudely made plow
I'm old enough to remember the 80's when factories started moving out of the US to Japan and China, there were plenty tax benefits for factory relocations and with the lower labor cost it was profitable for US companies to send their factories overseas, and it accelerated in the 90's
So to answer your question of "Why", Money, corporate green was all anyone was looking at
I agree we need to have a national level fix for this mess, but its still a good idea to let the science explore the bandaids we are going to need waiting on the national level to get their act together.