California Senate approves ban on autonomous trucks
driveteslacanada.ca
driveteslacanada.ca
California’s State Senate this week passed a bill which, if signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, would require autonomous semi-trailer trucks to have a trained human safety operator whenever they operate on public roads within the state. The bill, known as AB (Assembly Bill) 316 passed with a vote of 36-2.
All it does, if passed (and that remains to be seen since Newsom wants to run for president and needs that SV money to do it), is make the concession known that for FSD to be deployed on a truck a person(s) needs to be present to take over. And given how we have deadspots in even mobile phone connectivity this makes perfect sense.
I think the hype from AI and ML has waned significantly, and truckers are still a critical component of supply chains and still facing a large decrease in drivers pre and post COVID (cost of Class A and owning a truck being higher barriers of entry than before). If anyone really thought they would let massive freight trucks full of cargo left entirely on auto=pilot with no Human than I need to remidn you what happens on a regular basis; brake fade/loss happens so often that they design roads with run-off for this specific reason, and even then with an experienced Human it happens and causalities do occur [0]. He was given clemency but its still an incredibly risky profession with known regular incidents of death.
I was sharing a mountain with this guy in 2018 when this occured, I got stuck in the avalanches coming over from CA to CO and it was a sad saga that while tragic underscores why this position will never really go away for Humans.