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Comment by annerajb | Hacker News Reader

Just saw this: https://electrek.co/2016/12/14/uber-autonomous-rides-califor...

I am confused do they require a permit or is uber changing the claim/capabilities of the car to evade getting a permit?

That seems like click bait to me. I believe they require a permit for a fully autonomous vehicle, but since there's a driver in the car monitoring the systems with the ability to override, it isn't considered fully autonomous. This is neither sketchy, surprising, or even skirting the rules. The fact that it's picking up passengers seems mostly like a PR move to me as the income generated by them probably pales in comparison to the cost of the car plus the overhead of a (not typical) driver plus engineer.

No permit as far as I can tell. They have drivers actively monitoring their vehicles at all times and are playing semantic games right now as that article says. The biggest disappointment to me is the way they're deliberately ignoring NHTSA's guidelines around collision and near-miss data sharing.

Definitely no permit. They just got slapped with a stop order: http://www.recode.net/2016/12/14/13962698/uber-dmv-self-driv...

No permit. They're avoiding the regs like usual: https://www.ft.com/content/a6e8c5c4-c16e-11e6-81c2-f57d90f67...

From the original article referenced:

"The company doesn’t require a permit from the California DMV to operate in the state, it says, because the cars don’t qualify as fully autonomous as defined by state law because of the always present onboard safety operator."

Interesting. My guess is Uber is just planning on paying the inevitable fines as is their modus operandi. I wonder how much an infraction like this costs? I doubt there's any precedent.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's the MO of airbnb, uber and other SV startups. We've seen more than once that making a land grab for a new market brings more long-term success than any penalties dished out for not playing by the rules.

Because there is no reason to guess and make baseless claims, the article already addressed this topic. A permit is not required because a safety operator is on board at all times. Skirting regulations and paying fines has nothing to do with it.

That's only because of Uber's interpretation. From the FT article:

> California law defines an autonomous vehicle as one that is able to drive “without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator”.

> Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer who leads Uber’s driverless car efforts, said the fleet would be “self-driving” but not “autonomous”, making an unusual semantic distinction.

A pretty tenuous way of avoiding regulations if you ask me.

My understanding of the law is that an autonomous vehicle does not require control or monitoring. However, Uber's car has an operator monitoring the car's activity, although not actively controlling the car. Because of this, it is not considered autonomous by California law.

Apparently San Francisco disagrees.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/uber-ordered-to-stop-self-...

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