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After flying under lawmakers' radar for years, autonomous vehicle
companies are suddenly crashing into political reality. With the backing
of labor allies, California politicians are racing to rein in the fleets
of self-driving cars multiplying across the state’s roads.

Assemblymember Matt Haney, who represents San Francisco, has introduced a
bill that would require additional data reporting from autonomous vehicle companies to the Department of Motor Vehicles and impose strict financial penalties for those companies that fail to do so.

Haney’s proposal, known as the AV Safety and Transparency Bill, is meant
to bring state data reporting requirements in line with what self-driving
car companies have to disclose to the federal government.

It would require companies like Waymo, Zoox and Cruise to provide detailed reports on collisions, traffic violations, passenger and road user interactions, vehicle performance data and vehicle disengagements,
commonly known as “bricking.”

These reports would be required regardless of whether vehicles were
operating with a human test driver behind the wheel or were autonomously ferrying ride-hail passengers and would be published on the DMV website
within 30 days of their receipt.

“I’m supportive of the technology and want it done right,” Haney said in a statement. “But as they grow from testing to full deployment, there’s a
lot that’s not being shared and that hurts trust, it hurts transparency,
and it hurts safety.”

Failure to meet the requirements would result in a steep fine of around
$26,000 per day and the bill includes potential multipliers that would
raise the total penalty to a manufacturer to $131.5 million.

The bill, AB 3061, adds to a growing raft of autonomous vehicle
legislation being introduced by state lawmakers, many of whom are backed
by powerful labor unions, which are generally opposed to self-driving
vehicles because of the potential for mass disruption of the labor market
for its members.

“AB 3061 isn’t just about holding AV companies to account, it’s about
holding our regulators to account, cutting out the politics and putting
public safety first,” Peter Finn, president of Teamsters Joint Council 7,
said in a statement. “We can’t keep letting bureaucrats cater to their
friends in Big Tech and then look the other way when robotaxis hit people
or cause mayhem on our streets.”

Earlier this year, state Sen. David Cortese introduced SB 916, which would
give local governments the ability to establish vehicle caps and service
hours and require a system for emergency responders to override vehicle controls.

The Teamsters-backed bill would allow local authorities to block robotaxi services from operating unless authorized by individual cities and
counties.

It responds to concerns from local officials, particularly in San
Francisco, that they were being excluded from the regulatory process while having to contend with the on-the-ground ramifications of the new
technology.

“It enables cities and counties to do the same things they do with cab
service and ride-share around airports,” Cortese told The Standard in
January. “This gets us past square one and into a regulatory environment
where local jurisdictions have a say.”

In January, San Francisco Assemblymember Phil Ting introduced AB 1777,
which is meant to close a loophole within the current vehicle code that
exempts a driverless car from being given a moving violation citation
because there is no individual driver to cite.

The law would require that fines and points be assessed to the individual
car violating the law, mirroring the treatment of human drivers, with
payment from the autonomous vehicle permit holder.

Also in partnership with the Teamsters, Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-
Curry has reintroduced a bill that would require a trained human operator
to be behind the wheel of self-driving trucks weighing more than 10,000
lbs.

“This bill is still necessary,” Aguiar-Curry said at a rally announcing AB 2286. “It’s a commonsense measure that keeps humans on board a truck until
we have a plan for our workers and we are sure the tech bros aren’t
jamming unsafe technology down our throats.”

The proposal was initially brought forward by the Yolo County lawmaker as
AB 316 last year and passed both houses of the legislature with strong bipartisan support before it was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In his veto memo, Newsom wrote that “existing law provides sufficient
authority to create the appropriate regulatory framework.”

Based on the sheer volume of bills being put forward, it appears that many state lawmakers disagree with the governor’s assessment.

https://sfstandard.com/2024/03/11/prodded-by-labor-california-lawmakers- bring-hammer-down-on-self-driving-car-companies/?itm_source=parsely-api

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