Hello, dear readers!
Your humble blogger wishes you a very happy Monday – and it truly is! The Christmas lights are out, the offices are (almost) all closed for the holidays, and the schools are closed as well, flooding the normally calm lives of parents with their idle children. But not only the cheerful among us are busy this holiday season. Just as we take moments to reflect on the wonderful life we have bearing witness to science, technology, and innovation cure all the ills of mankind, the Grinches of the world are busy stealing Christmas and the Gubmn’t of California is moving to stifle advances.
According to this draft, “[a] licensed operator will be required to be present inside the vehicle and be capable of taking control in the event of a technology failure or other emergency. Driverless vehicles are initially excluded from deployment.”
This is only a draft, and it’s supposed to be for a 3-year period only, but you can imagine what effect this is going to have on investors and manufacturing. Hopefully not too much so that your humble blogger can spend his driving time on blogging instead.
Hearings are being held on January 28, 2016 in Sacramento and on February 2, 2016 in Los Angeles to address these proposed regulations.
The benefits of self-driving cars are pretty clear: release of labor currently occupied in driving professions, freedom and mobility for those physically unable to drive, fewer accidents, etc., etc., etc. What self-driving cars mean for the state is less in tax revenue from wages of drivers, fewer traffic tickets, and an evaporating demand for public services like transportation.
Sure enough, the DMV is already lining up make it harder for us to replace a lot of the workings of California with something that actually works. Let’s hope that this draft is revised before it’s implemented.
