This is what's always confused me. The usual play is to suck up to a corporation in the hopes that a bunch of jobs or other investment will show up, but self-dr

This is what's always confused me. The usual play is to suck up to a corporation in the hopes that a bunch of jobs or other investment will show up, but self-driving testing is kinda a perfect example of something that will not give any economic benefit to the testbed state at all. It takes very little local investment, and it's a temporary thing that will only yield benefit for the corporation doing the testing, and as soon as they have as much data as they want they can leave and use that data anywhere else. And if what Arizona hoped for is to get self driving taxis early, well, other states can simply let the sucker states like Arizona do the testing, then wait to legalize self driving till the day after it proves itself, thus reaping close to 100% of the benefits with close to 0% of the disadvantages. I honestly think Arizona politicians just blundered because they were following the typical playbook out of pure habit. I hope the explanation is not less innocent than that, but that's also very possible. Petty corruption is very common in USA state governments.