Skip to main content

California self-driving car rules ‘perplexing’

California’s Department of Motor vehicles (DMV) has issued its draft self-driving vehicle deployment regulations, which, according to Google’s self-driving car chief, Chris Urmson, are perplexing. The DMV has proposed a draft rule that would require a self-driving car to have a licensed driver at all times. Urmson says that while this maintains the same old status quo, it falls short on allowing this technology to reach its full potential, while excluding those who need to get around but cannot drive.
December 21, 2015 Read time: 2 mins

California’s Department of Motor vehicles (DMV) has issued its draft self-driving vehicle deployment regulations, which, according to Google’s self-driving car chief, Chris Urmson, are perplexing.

The DMV has proposed a draft rule that would require a self-driving car to have a licensed driver at all times. Urmson says that while this maintains the same old status quo, it falls short on allowing this technology to reach its full potential, while excluding those who need to get around but cannot drive.

He says, “While we’re disappointed by this, we will continue to work with the DMV as they seek feedback in the coming months, in the hope that we can recapture the original spirit of the bill.

“California is a state with both world-class car culture and world-class innovation, and we can do better. Instead of putting a ceiling on the potential of self-driving cars, let’s have the courage to imagine what California would be like if we could live without the shackles of stressful commutes, wasted hours, and restricted mobility for those who want the independence that the automobile has always represented.”

The DMV has scheduled two public workshops, the first on 28 January in Sacramento and the second in Los Angeles on 2 February to allow interested parties to provide input on the draft regulations.

Related Content

  • December 8, 2016
    Data handling important for autonomous vehicles
    Data handling is becoming an ever-greater part of transportation and never more so than with autonomous vehicles, as Andrew Bardin Williams hears from some big names.
  • August 8, 2017
    Asecap Days delves beneath the surface of tolling
    Colin Sowman picks his highlights from Asecap’s 45th annual Study and Information Days in Paris. European tolling association Asecap holds annual Study & Information Days, provides delegates with updates on the latest moves and thinking in the tolling sector and is a key meeting place for concessionaires from 22 countries. The importance of road transport to the French economy was highlighted by the country’s director general of transport infrastructures, François Poupard, in the opening session. He told th
  • May 24, 2022
    ‘How do you connect your dots with their dots?’
    Ahead of the European Congress in Toulouse, Joost Vantomme tells Adam Hill how Ertico-ITS Europe is looking to bring partners together in pursuit of smarter and more sustainable mobility
  • August 21, 2014
    Use tolling to help rebuild interstate highways
    Following the passage of the short-term Highway Trust Fund bill, Patrick Jones, CEO of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, writing in Roll Call, writes that states should now be focused on capitalising on a key part of the Grow America Act, which will lift the ban on interstate tolling, allowing states to determine how to fund reconstruction of interstate highways. He says that now that Congress has ‘patched’ the Highway Trust Fund to save it from insolvency, it is time to get some