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Comment by yonran | Hacker News Reader

Previous discussions of earlier versions of the bill: in March: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688267, and in May: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4010297

Current bill text: http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1251-1300/sb_129...

What seems to have changed since May:

- The California DMV will set safety rules before 2015 instead of waiting for NHTSA to allow production use,

- The manufacturer must apply to the DMV before production use.

- Cars must record sensor data for 30s before every collision.

What I don’t like about the bill is that it requires an operator to be able to take manual control of the vehicle at any time. I’d imagine that as autonomous vehicles develop in the coming years, this restriction will have to be removed.

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> What I don’t like about the bill is that it requires an operator to be able to take manual control of the vehicle at any time.

I'd feel very strange being in a car without a manual override of some sort. Maybe in 10 years and only if the vast majority of cars are self driven it will be a different story. I can't imagine trying to drive through Chicago hoping that my little robot driver is aware of the two tow-trucks weaving through traffic behind me at 90mph.

10 years seems optimistic to me. If autonomous vehicles take off, I doubt they'll hit majority in less than 30 years, 50 more likely. These probably won't even be purchasable for 10 years.

When horseless carriages first became legal, the legal requirement called for "a man with a red flag to walk in front of any self-propelled vehicle on a public road at no more than 4mph".

http://www.datchethistory.org.uk/Link%20Articles/Ellis/evely...

In the future, if manual override becomes undesirable or unneeded, it will probably be repealed. Actually, I'm surprised by this many steps forward so soon (I was a bit cynical of them ever being approved)

I think I understand your complaint. If people can take control, i.e. take responsibility, then it's imperative to show evidence they were in control if something were to go wrong.

This will always be tricky because even Toyota a couple of years ago had trouble defending against alleged bugs that turned out to be completely untrue.

This will always be tricky because even Toyota a couple of years ago had trouble defending against alleged bugs that turned out to be completely untrue.

The silly conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the excessive media focus on Toyota had anything to do with the government's Detroit bailout. Probably not, but if I were writing a conspiracy novel, it'd be an easy plot point to add.

The manual control at any time is actually a feature I want to have. It doesn't have to be the current style steering wheel, stick and pedals but maybe something else like a joystick.

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