California's Democratic governor has vetoed a bill that would have required human drivers to be on board self-driving trucks.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill to require human drivers on board self-driving trucks, a measure that union leaders and truck drivers said would save hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state.

The legislation vetoed Friday night would have banned self-driving trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilograms) — ranging from UPS delivery vans to massive big rigs — from operating on public roads unless a human driver is on board.

Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, head of the California Labor Federation, said driverless trucks are dangerous and called Newsom’s veto shocking. She estimates that removing drivers would cost a quarter million jobs in the state.

  • JasSmith
    16•1 year ago

    Definitely agree with that, but the tech is definitely not there to handle all situations, and as long as that’s the case, a human should be there.

    I disagree. I think the bar should be “safer than a human.” If our bar were “perfect,” self driving would never be permitted without a human at the wheel.

    • @[email protected]
      15•1 year ago

      I’m not really talking about avoiding accidents, I’m talking about what happens after something goes wrong (accident, flat tyre, load gets loose, whatever). Who’s going to deal with that? Does the company need to send someone to unblock traffic? What’s the SLA on that? What if the unblocking guy is stuck in traffic?

      • @myusernameblows
        6•1 year ago

        We’re talking about big rigs here, there’s already rarely anything a driver can do to “deal with” something like a load coming loose or a flat tire anyways. All you can really do is hope you’ve noticed the problem soon enough to get off the highway, which is obviously something that an AI would be better at with its many sensors and lack of distractability.

        Even in situations where the truck ends up stuck in the middle lane of a big freeway, it’s not like the driver can just get out and push it off to the side of the road. Except for a few pretty rare cases, all the driver does is set up some pylons and then sit in the sleeper and wait for the heavy duty tow truck to show up.

      • JasSmith
        2•1 year ago

        Gotcha. These companies have teams of support personnel which are despatched when accidents and issues occur.

      • @Not_Alec_Baldwin
        1•1 year ago

        As long as it doesn’t become another externality that places the expenses on the government/taxpayer, I’m okay with it. Someone in this thread mentioned there are teams to handle situations like that, and they sounds like enough for me.

      • snooggums
        1•1 year ago

        That is what we do when human drivers run into issues and block traffic, why would it need to be different for automated vehicles?