That's exactly what happened to a woman riding in a Zoox autonomous vehicle recently, when a homeless man jumped into the car with her. No driver to intervene. No barrier between passenger and intruder. Just you, a stranger, and an algorithm.

Let that sink in for a second.

We've spent years debating whether autonomous vehicles are safe enough for our streets — are the sensors good enough, can they handle fog, will they block fire trucks? All legitimate questions. But almost nobody in City Hall is asking the more basic question: are San Francisco's streets safe enough for autonomous vehicles and their passengers?

The entire value proposition of a robotaxi is convenience and safety. But that promise collapses instantly when the physical environment around the vehicle is lawless. A driverless car can't lock its doors the way a human driver would when they see trouble approaching. It can't speed away from a dicey situation. It can't tell someone to back off. It is, by design, passive — which makes it a perfect target in a city that has spent years being passive about street-level disorder.

This isn't an anti-AV argument. Autonomous vehicles represent genuine innovation, and San Francisco should be proud to be at the frontier. But the city has obligations that go beyond issuing permits and collecting tax revenue from tech companies. It has to maintain the basic public safety infrastructure that makes these services viable.

What happens when incidents like this go viral — and they will — and riders start ditching robotaxis for old-fashioned Ubers with actual human drivers and door locks? What happens when Zoox and Waymo start questioning whether SF is worth the liability headache?

The city can't keep marketing itself as the capital of the future while refusing to solve the problems of the present. You can have the world's most advanced autonomous vehicle fleet or you can have streets where anything goes. You really can't have both.

Invest in innovation, sure. But maybe also invest in making sure your residents don't have uninvited guests climbing into their cars.