Shotgun Cab is a plan for a Chicago-owned fleet of two-seat, driverless, all-electric cabs. Safer streets, cheaper rides, cleaner air, and the best seat in the house every single time. Here's the case, and the research behind it.
Driverless miles logged by Waymo through March 2026. This is no longer a science project.[1]
Fewer serious-injury crashes than human drivers on the same roads, per Waymo's benchmark. Independent IIHS work lands at 81% fewer injury crashes.[1][2]
People killed on Chicago streets in 2024, 38 of them on foot. Vision Zero's target year for zero was 2026.[5]
Of Illinois electricity comes from carbon-free nuclear. An electric cab plugged in here is genuinely clean.[7]
A Cybercab has no back seat, no middle seat, and nobody to scoot over for. Two people, side by side, windshield view of the city. Every ride is the good seat.
Chicagoans already take tens of millions of ride-hail trips a year, and the city publishes every one of them.[9] Here's what changes when the driver is software.
About half the cost of a ride-hail trip is paying a person to sit in the driver's seat. Remove the driver, use a vehicle that costs a fraction of a Waymo, and the fare math changes for good. We'll publish our fare table before the first ride.
No surge because drivers went home. No "driver cancelled." A fleet cab is on shift whenever hospital staff, restaurant crews, and O'Hare red-eyes need it.
Across more than 200 million driverless miles, the industry's own data shows 82% fewer injury crashes and 93% fewer pedestrian-injury crashes than human drivers.[1] Insurers see it in the claims, too.[3]
The Blue Line doesn't stop at your front door. A two-seat cab priced for a short hop makes the train the easy choice, instead of the car.
No tipping math, no rating anxiety, no small talk unless you brought a friend. Get in, ride shotgun, get out.
A cab that never drinks. Chicago's late-night crash numbers have a piece that software can simply delete.
Chicago set a goal in 2017 to end traffic deaths by 2026. The count in 2024 was 109, only 18 fewer than when the plan was written.[5] Street redesigns matter. So does the thing doing the driving.
More than 23,000 people were injured in Chicago crashes in 2023.[5] NHTSA attributes the critical pre-crash decision to the driver in roughly 94% of crashes.[10] Every mile moved from a human to a validated driver is a mile with a fraction of the risk.
A private car sits parked about 95% of the time.[11] A fleet cab is either carrying someone or charging at a depot, never hunting for a spot on Clark Street. Fewer parked cars is more room for bus lanes, bike lanes, and trees.
Illinois generates more nuclear power than any state, over half of its electricity.[7] A gas cab idling at a stand becomes an EV charging on the cleanest big grid in the country.
This is a local fleet company, not a Silicon Valley outpost. Depots, charging, cleaning, and support jobs stay in the city, and the fleet pays Chicago's per-trip ground transportation tax like every other ride.
Chicago already requires ride-hail companies to report every trip to the open data portal.[9] We'll report the same, plus a public monthly safety ledger: miles, incidents, and empty-mile share.
Software doesn't decline a trip to the South or West Side. Fleet dispatch can be measured, published, and held to a standard that no driver network has ever met.
Every number on this page traces to one of these sources. Where a source cuts against us, it's here too, marked in red. Send us what we're missing: research@shotguncab.com.
220.6M rider-only miles. 82% fewer injury crashes, 94% fewer serious-injury crashes, 93% fewer pedestrian-injury crashes than the human benchmark.
Company-published, but methodology is public and peer-reviewed (see [4]). The largest driverless dataset that exists.
waymo.com/safety/impactIndependent analysis: 68% fewer crashes and 81% fewer injury crashes per mile than human drivers in the same four cities.
50 million Waymo miles (2021 to 2024) versus 222 billion human miles in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. IIHS flags small samples in Austin and calls for better national AV crash reporting.
iihs.org/news/detail/waymos-driverless-cars-crash-less-often-than-people88% fewer property-damage claims and 92% fewer bodily-injury claims over 25.3M miles, against a baseline of 500,000+ claims and 200 billion human miles.
Reinsurers price risk for a living. Nine property claims and two injury claims where human drivers would be expected to produce 78 and 26.
waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymoCrash-type comparison of rider-only crash rates to human benchmarks at 56.7 million miles.
The academic version of the safety hub numbers, with the benchmark-adjustment method laid out for other researchers to check.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2025.2499887109 traffic deaths in Chicago in 2024 (38 pedestrians, 2 cyclists, 69 in vehicles). 186 deaths in 2023. More than 23,000 injured in 2023.
Ten years into Vision Zero, the 2024 total is only 18 lower than 2017. The goal of zero deaths was set for 2026.
chicago.suntimes.com/transportation/2025/08/25/vision-zero…The city's own crash dashboards, the Vision Zero action plan, and the high-crash corridor maps.
Primary source for the fatality and injury counts cited in [5].
chicago.gov/TrafficSafetyIllinois's six nuclear plants produced 54% of the state's electricity in 2023, more nuclear generation than any other state.
This is why "but the electricity comes from coal" doesn't apply here. The remaining mix is gas, wind, and a shrinking share of coal.
eia.gov/state/index.php?sid=ILHB 4663, the Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Project Act (Rep. Kam Buckner), is stuck in the Rules Committee. Driverless commercial service is not yet legal in Illinois.
Waymo began mapping and testing with safety drivers in Chicago in March 2026. Labor and trial-lawyer groups raised jobs and liability objections, addressed below.
capitolnewsillinois.com/news/waymo-begins-testing-in-chicago…Every ride-hail trip in Chicago since November 2018, reported by ordinance: pickup and dropoff census tract, time, fare, tip.
The reporting standard a Shotgun Cab fleet would inherit on day one, and the baseline for measuring whether we serve every neighborhood.
data.cityofchicago.org/…/Transportation-Network-Providers-Trips-2025-The critical pre-crash event was attributed to the driver in an estimated 94% of crashes surveyed.
Often misquoted as "94% of crashes are caused by human error." NHTSA is careful: the critical reason is the last failure in the chain, not the sole cause. Still the best national picture of where crashes start.
crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812115The average car is parked about 95% of the time.
A UK study, and the number is echoed in Donald Shoup's U.S. parking research. The point holds anywhere: privately owned cars are mostly storage problems.
racfoundation.org/research/mobility/spaced-out-perspectives-on-parkingTwo seats, no steering wheel or pedals, butterfly doors, inductive charging, and a stated target price under $30,000.
Pilot production began at Giga Texas in 2026; volume timing has slipped. Shotgun Cab is not affiliated with Tesla, and our timeline follows theirs.
energynow.com/2024/10/elon-musk-unveils-30000-tesla-cybercab…Chicago has good reasons to be suspicious of tech companies bearing gifts. These are the objections we hear most, answered straight.
Snow is the hardest problem in autonomy, and anyone who tells you it's solved is selling something. Lane markings vanish, sensors get crusted, and the road is a different road every hour.
Our answer is an honest operating envelope. The fleet runs where and when it has been validated, and stands down in conditions it hasn't. That's the same day a lot of human cabs disappear anyway. Each winter the validated envelope grows, and we publish it. Waymo has been winter-testing in Buffalo and Michigan for years for the same reason; we won't launch a Chicago January until the data says yes.
It changes them. Driving for a ride-hail app today is gig work: no benefits, no ladder, and pay that swings with the algorithm. That's the job being "protected."
A fleet needs people. Depot technicians, cleaners, chargers, dispatch and remote-assistance staff, curbside ambassadors, and the mechanics who keep 24-hour vehicles alive. We're committing to Chicago hiring first, a driver-transition program with priority hiring for current TNP and taxi drivers, and W-2 jobs, not gig contracts.
A Cybercab is a two-seater and it is not a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
Two-seat cabs cover most trips, not all of them. Chicago already funds wheelchair-accessible service through a per-trip fee on ride-hail; a Shotgun Cab trip pays into that the same way. We'll partner with an accessible provider so a wheelchair user requesting a ride through us gets one, at the same fare, and we'll publish response-time parity. Bigger groups: split across two cabs, and we'll price pairs accordingly.
It can, if you let it. Ride-hail added congestion in most cities because thousands of independent drivers cruise around waiting for a ping.
A fleet is dispatched, not cruising. Idle cabs wait at depots and designated stands, not in traffic. We'll publish empty-mile share monthly and accept a cap the city sets. And a cab that makes the Blue Line the obvious choice for the last mile takes cars off the road, which is the whole point.
We are. There's no driver to point at, so the fleet operator carries the liability, full stop.
Commercial coverage well above the state minimum, named publicly, plus every incident reported to the city and to NHTSA's standing general order. The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association's objection to HB 4663 was that it only requires minimum insurance.[8] We'd rather set the bar than argue about it.
Not yet. HB 4663, the Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Project Act, would authorize pilots in Cook County and a few others, and it's stalled in the Rules Committee.[8] Waymo has been mapping Chicago streets with safety drivers since March 2026, waiting for the same green light.
Our plan is sequenced to the law. Nothing driverless moves in Chicago until the state and the city say so. Until then, this site exists to make sure the debate happens with real data on the table.
Because we want a fleet Chicago can own. Waymo builds a great driver on a six-figure vehicle and operates it themselves; there's no version where a Chicago company buys Waymos. Tesla is building a purpose-built two-seater with a stated target under $30,000, meant to be sold.[12]
The bet is local ownership. If the vehicle ships and clears validation, the cheapest cab ever built becomes the cheapest fare ever offered. If it doesn't, we wait. The research on this page is about autonomous EVs in general; it's true whichever badge is on the hood.
Trip records go to the city the way every ride-hail trip already does: census tract, time, fare.[9] Cameras exist for safety, and that's all they're for.
Commitments in writing: in-cabin video kept only for a short safety window unless an incident is reported, no sale of rider data, no advertising, and a published data policy before the first ride.
Draft milestones. Fleet sizes and neighborhoods are placeholders until the pilot framework exists.
Publish the research, build a coalition of riders, aldermen, transit advocates, and hospital and restaurant employers. Grow the rider list.
Apply under the state pilot framework and Chicago's Business Affairs and Consumer Protection rules. Name the insurer, publish the safety case and data policy.
Tens of cabs, a handful of neighborhoods, safety-driver phase first. Monthly public ledger: miles, incidents, empty-mile share, neighborhood coverage.
Expansion gated on the pilot ledger, not a press release. Every new zone comes with the same commitments and the same numbers.
Riders, neighbors, aldermen, reporters, skeptics: we want to hear from all of you.