By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Complaints about rideshare drivers who can’t communicate in English aren’t just a social media grievance. They’ve been the subject of an actual bill in the U.S. Senate, and rideshare companies have already had to answer for it publicly.
U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., introduced the Understanding Basic English Requirements Act, or UBER Act, in November 2025. The bill would bar government agencies from awarding contracts to rideshare platforms whose drivers can’t read or speak English well enough to talk with the public, understand road signs, and communicate with police. Companies that don’t comply would lose federal contracting eligibility for five years. Tuberville has argued the standard should match what’s already required of commercial truck drivers, saying rideshare firms that take taxpayer money have an obligation to vet who’s driving. Uber pushed back publicly, telling a reporter that every driver on its platform passes a background check and that its fatality rate is below the national average, regardless of what language a driver speaks.
The complaint predates Tuberville’s bill. In Miami, where more than three-quarters of residents speak a language other than English at home, Lyft began offering drivers free access to Duolingo years ago after riders and at least one open letter to Uber raised the same concern. Whatever the actual scale of the problem, it’s real enough that a company built its own answer to it.
Here’s the part almost nobody connects to that debate: a driverless car doesn’t have this problem at all, because there’s no driver to talk to. You type your destination into an app instead of explaining it to a person. Waymo has gone further than that. The company’s blog announced in March that its app and in-car screens now automatically match a rider’s phone language settings across English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Italian, French and German, no menus or translation apps required.
“A driverless car doesn’t have this problem at all, because there’s no driver to talk to.”
That’s the pitch driverless ride services can make that a human-driven one can’t. Whether Maryland ever gets to test that pitch is a separate question, and right now the answer is: not yet, and not because of Cybercab.
Where Cybercab actually stands
Tesla opened its two-seat, steering-wheel-free Cybercab to paying riders in Austin on Sept. 4, following a low-key launch event the night before that Tesla did not livestream. As of that week, roughly 45 Cybercabs were registered for autonomous operation in Texas, part of about 420 total autonomous Tesla vehicles in the state.
Tesla’s broader Robotaxi app, which mostly runs modified Model Y vehicles, is currently limited to six cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. There is no Cybercab or Robotaxi service, testing program, or announced expansion plan in Maryland or anywhere in the D.C. region.
The launch came with regulatory baggage. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit query the same week, examining how Tesla certified a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors as compliant with federal safety standards built around human drivers. NHTSA said it would scrutinize the “process and technical data” behind that certification. It’s not a recall, and the agency hasn’t found the vehicle unsafe. It’s asking Tesla to show its work.
So to answer the practical question directly: Cybercab isn’t running over Waymo in Maryland, because Cybercab isn’t here.
“Cybercab isn’t running over Waymo in Maryland, because Cybercab isn’t here.”
Waymo’s quieter approach
Waymo is. As of a March 4 legislative hearing, the company already had roughly a dozen vehicles operating in Baltimore, driven by professional safety drivers while the technology mapped the city’s streets and traffic patterns, according to Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher. No passenger rides were being offered at that point.
“Waymo already has about a dozen cars in Baltimore, driven by professional drivers while the technology learns the city.”
Gov. Wes Moore has been publicly welcoming toward Waymo’s interest in Maryland, but his administration has not put forward AV regulations of its own, leaving that job to the legislature.
- Waymo currently runs fully autonomous, no-safety-driver service in roughly 10 U.S. cities, including Phoenix, Los Angeles and Houston.
- Washington, D.C. announced in March 2025 that it wanted Waymo service by 2026; as of this summer, the company was still testing there under a safety driver while the D.C. Council debated a commercial licensing bill.
- Baltimore is the only confirmed Maryland city where Waymo has deployed test vehicles.
Annapolis punted
“The legal mechanism that would let Waymo actually drop the safety driver in Maryland has now stalled for two consecutive sessions.”
The legal mechanism that would let Waymo, or anyone else, actually drop the safety driver in Maryland is Senate Bill 909, sponsored by Sen. Sara Love, D-Montgomery, with a House companion, House Bill 1295, from Del. Natalie Ziegler, D-Howard and Montgomery. The bills would have directed the Motor Vehicle Administration to write technical standards for fully autonomous vehicles and would have classified the vehicle’s automated driving system, not a human, as the legal “operator.”
Both bills got a single committee hearing apiece in early March and went nowhere after that. Maryland’s General Assembly session ended in April without either bill advancing out of committee, according to the bills’ own legislative history on the General Assembly’s tracking site.
This is the second year in a row that has happened. HB1295 is a re-filed version of a bill Ziegler first introduced as HB1256 in the 2025 session. That version also got one committee hearing, in February 2025, and never moved again. Del. Nick Allen, D-Baltimore County, signed on as a co-sponsor of this year’s House version and has said unresolved concerns from labor groups were part of what kept it stuck in committee again.
The March 4 Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee hearing previewed why. Waymo showed up with a car parked outside the State House and testified that its technology is involved in 90% fewer crashes causing serious injury or worse, compared with human drivers. Ronza Othman, president of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland, testified that a rideshare driver had refused to pick her up days earlier and called autonomous vehicles “a game changer” for riders with disabilities. Thomas Doyle of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters raised concerns on behalf of the thousands of Teamsters who drive professionally in Maryland, questioning whether the technology is actually ready and objecting to a provision allowing unlicensed “fleet technicians” to remotely take over a car without necessarily knowing Maryland roads.
Senators who ran the hearing didn’t seem outright opposed to autonomous vehicles eventually operating in Maryland. What didn’t get resolved was who bears the risk, and the job losses, in the meantime. That leaves Maryland in the same limbo as D.C. and Virginia: robotaxi companies testing quietly on the shoulders while state and local governments argue over the rules.
“What didn’t get resolved was who bears the risk — and the job losses — in the meantime.”
The bottom line
- A federal bill, the UBER Act, would require English proficiency for rideshare drivers on platforms with government contracts. It’s pending in a Senate committee with no vote scheduled.
- Driverless rideshare sidesteps that entire debate by removing the driver-passenger conversation altogether, and Waymo’s app already supports nine languages.
- Tesla’s Cybercab has zero presence, testing, or announced plans in Maryland.
- Waymo has been testing in Baltimore with a human safety driver, as required under current Maryland law.
- A bill that would let Waymo drop that driver has now died in committee two years running.
- With the same sponsors still in office, the fight is likely to return when the General Assembly reconvenes in January, though neither Love nor Ziegler has said whether they’ll refile.
Sources: Congress.gov bill text for S.3121, the UBER Act (119th Congress); Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Nov. 6, 2025 press release and coverage from FreightWaves and WSFA, including Uber’s public response; Miami New Times reporting on Lyft’s Duolingo partnership with Miami drivers; Waymo’s official blog post on multi-language app and in-car screen support; Maryland Matters reporting on the March 4, 2026 Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee hearing on SB909; the Maryland General Assembly’s legislative tracking pages for SB0909, HB1295 and HB1256 (2025 and 2026 Regular Sessions); WTOP News coverage of the companion House hearing; Greater Greater Washington’s regional roundup on stalled autonomous vehicle legislation, including comment from Del. Nick Allen; City Cast DC’s reporting on D.C.’s robotaxi licensing debate; TechCrunch, Electrek, ABC News and MediaPost coverage of Tesla’s Sept. 3-4, 2026 Cybercab launch in Austin and the resulting NHTSA audit query; and 9to5Google’s roundup of Waymo’s active and testing markets.
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