California’s traffic laws are being questioned as self-driving cars are currently immune to violations despite growing issues involving accidents and driving safety issues.
According to NBC News, California laws state only drivers can be ticketed, so law enforcement is unable to legally cite self-driving vehicles or their makers for traffic violations.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott sent out an internal memo, which NBC obtained, and stated, “No citation for a moving violation can be issued if the [autonomous vehicle] is being operated in a driverless mode.”
“Technology evolves rapidly and, at times, faster than legislation or regulations can adapt to the changes.”
This comes as self-driving cars have reportedly run red lights, swerved through construction zones, blocked emergency response vehicles, and even struck a pedestrian.
Irina Raicu, director of the internet ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, explained, “It seems like while they make fewer of the kind of mistakes that we see from human drivers, they make interesting new kinds of mistakes.”
“It has the feel of a human subject mass experiment, right? Without the kind of consent that we usually want to see as part of that,” she added.
While California struggles to adapt to self-driving car issues, both Arizona and Texas have already adjusted their laws to ticket self-driving vehicles.
The owner of a self-driving vehicle that does not obey traffic laws is subject to citations in Arizona.
Texas has a similar law, passed in 2017, which considers the owner of the vehicle “the operator” and, therefore, liable for any violations of damage self-driving cars may cause.
Self-driving car company Waymo’s product management director, Chris Ludwick, claimed although the technology isn’t sound, it is “safer than human drivers.”
Sen. Dave Cortese (D-Calif.) is unsure. He is currently investigating DMV policies for revoking self-driving car licenses.
He said, “We’re using the public square basically as a laboratory for trial and error.”