Google, california dmv and disabled people clash over driverless car regulations
The U.S. state’s Department of Motor Vehicles has put forward a draft that the group says nullifies key benefits of the technology
The Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMVs for short) are the motor vehicle authorities of the U.S. states. They often appear in television series when something needs to be portrayed as particularly bureaucratic and unnecessarily time-consuming – for example, on The Simpsons, where Patty and Selma Bouvier work at the DMV, or in the South Park episode Let Go, Let Gov. But the agencies owe this reputation not only to such series, but also to their own actions, as a recent draft regulation from the California DMV shows.
In it, the authorities demand that the robot cars that companies such as Google, Audi and Bosch plan to launch in the next decade be allowed on the road only if they have pedals and a steering wheel, behind which sits a driver with a driver’s license who keeps a close eye on traffic and is liable for accidents and traffic violations.