Your reaction is not irrational at all. This sort of abuse of public space to test technology that is nowhere close to being ready should make you angry. They are trying to progress more rapidly by externalizing the costs of experimentation onto the public. They've hit a plateau and don't have a clue how to get beyond it, but they've got billions of dollars of pressure on the backs of promises they made, so they can't admit their fundamental approach is unsuitable to reach what is actually a questionable end-goal in the first place--namely, self-driving taxis. Why is that the first problem they are trying to tackle? That's the hardest problem to solve. I think it all goes back to Uber struggling to defend its business model. To justify their nine- and ten- figure quarterly losses, they had to promise a world where the labor costs would go away (how driverless Ubers could ever pay back all the money they've lost, I have no idea--if they replace contract labor with their own capital and the maintenance involved... how is this a profitable company?). They convinced their investors it was possible. And then everyone else assumed it was possible and bought into that same fantasy. I hope we're finally waking up. But those billions have left a major hangover and no one is thinking clearly quite yet.