California Governor Vetoes Autonomous Truck Ban
In a surprising move, California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed Assembly Bill 316, which would require autonomous vehicles to have a capable driver on alert at all times, effectively making it no longer autonomous.
Details
We wrote about this earlier in September 2023. The California government works a lot like the United States’ legislative branch, where if the governor vetoes a bill, the legislature can override that veto with enough support, and with the level of support AB-316 received from the state legislature, that may very well just happen.
Industry stakeholders sounded off on the decision, with labor unions opposing it and technological companies expressing support. Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, head of the California Labor Federation, has some particularly choice words.
“We will not sit by as bureaucrats side with tech companies, trading our safety and jobs for increased corporate profits. We will continue to fight to make sure that robots do not replace human drivers and that technology is not used to destroy good jobs,” Fletcher said in a statement made late Friday, the 22nd.
Conclusion
What happens next, as of the time of publishing, is anyone’s guess. Considering the overwhelming support the Bill received in the California legislature, however, the most likely outcome is that it will become law regardless of what Governor Newsom thinks, and fully autonomous trucks without a driver will be prohibited until at least 2030.
There are two reasons why Californians are opposed to autonomous trucks, those being safety concerns for an emerging technology, and the effect that it would have on 700,000 truckers in the economy, putting the employment of an estimated 1.5% of the state’s population into question.
The battle over autonomous trucks will continue to rage on in other states such as Texas, no doubt, but it seems the most likely outcome in the Golden State is that the use of autonomous vehicles will be strictly for practice purposes only. A California resident that wants to see one of these vehicles operate fully automatically will have to travel outside of state borders to see it, at least until 2030 rolls around.
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