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Comment by Bluestrike2 | Hacker News Reader

All of that over a $150 permit? They paid more in legal fees just to have their attorneys (in-house or otherwise) open the DMV's regulations on the subject, and all they got out of it was a decidedly antagonistic start to their relationship with the regulatory body that will regulate them.

For some reason, I think their executive team's fondness for self-destructive impulses is far more of an existential threat to Uber than coming in second in rolling out autonomous vehicles.

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Major requirement associated with getting that $150 permit is reporting disengagement statistics, and, hence, showing up on this report:

http://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14474800/waymo-self-driving-d...

Ironically, all the effort to avoid regulation and oversight, will probably lead to far more expensive lawsuits on the flip side - Run a red light now, maybe hit a pedestrian later.

Not really. Red states like Arizona seem to like self driving cars just fine.

It is Californias loss, and other people's gain. The cars are going to be tested, no matter what.

Self driving cars are already much safer than humans. The recent government investigation of the Tesla self driving cars proved this (ten's of thousands of self driving cars are already on the road right now) .

Huh. Lots of car companies do their driverless tech testing in California. Uber just doesn't like following rules that everyone else finds reasonable.

No, a couple companies test a dozen cars here and there.

Try that with a thousand and watch California lose its mind.

Regulatory approval in California is generally a green light for the rest of the country because California's standards tend to lead the way for other states'. Arizone, not so much.

Sure, but having to do so is pretty much inevitable. At best, Uber was fighting a short-term delaying action with a blatantly untenable interpretation of what constitutes an autonomous vehicle (they've also repeatedly contradicted it with their marketing, press coverage and releases, and even Levandowski's own emails from the article). Eventually, they'd have lost and had to file anyhow. All they accomplished was guaranteeing that Uber filings will likely receive additional attention in the future.

It's Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. My only question is if there's a Sancho Panza at Uber to take note.

Right, but it's possible (and I would say likely) that their self-driving program is behind everyone else and their disengagement rate is atrociously high, which is why they would go to great lengths to delay reporting this information and happily decamped to Arizona, which doesn't require disengagement reports, while they try to catch up by whatever means they can. According to NYT reporting, their software failed to identify six traffic lights during the brief time they were testing in SF, which suggests they are pretty far behind. Kalanick has correctly identified self-driving technology as an existential threat to Uber, and given their lofty valuation, they absolutely cannot afford to be perceived as being behind in this area.

don't they also have to report accidents?

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