California state launches system allowing driverless cars to ditch backup drivers

IT was a rulemaking slog, one that some in the industry criticised as an example of typical California overreach.

But after years of drafts, public comment sessions and revisions, California regulations allowing the testing and public use of fully driverless cars took effect. Previous rules required human backup drivers behind the wheel.

One firm has applied for one of the new permits, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. It will be named later in the approval process, the DMV said.

Back in 2012, when California officials started drafting plans to regulate cars that could drive themselves, the idea was still fresh and new.

Governor Edmund Brown held the signing ceremony for the autonomous vehicles legislation at Google’s headquarters, and bragged that “California’s technological leadership is turning today’s science fiction into tomorrow’s reality.”

That was before dozens of tech companies and carmakers leaped into the realm of autonomous vehicles, before Uber surprised many in the industry by adding passengers to its test vehicles in Pittsburgh in 2016, and before Waymo, formerly Google’s selfdriving car project, started letting ordinary residents be ferried around Arizona without a backup driver.

And it was before a driverless Uber SUV struck and killed a woman walking a bike across a Tempe, Arizona, thoroughfare last month.

California officials said the fatality in Arizona, along with the death last month of a Tesla owner whose vehicle was operating in partiallyautomated “Autopilot” mode, did not shift their overall approach as the long-awaited regulations finally took effect.

The California DMV “takes the safe operation of our autonomous permit holders very seriously,” the agency said in a statement, noting that the regulations have been under development for years.

“The Department will not approve any permits until it is clear that the applicant has met all of the safe operation requirements set forth in law and in the regulations.”

The rules require developers of the technology to certify that their vehicles have “been tested under controlled conditions that simulate, as closely as practicable” the types of conditions and circumstances they are designed for, according to the state DMV. That might include operating at night in the rain in a particularly busy geography. — Washington Post.