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California DMV approves map increase in Waymo driverless operations

(www.dmv.ca.gov)
207 points NullHypothesist | 1 comments | 21 Nov 25 22:52 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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arjie ◴[22 Nov 25 00:07 UTC] No.46010639[source]▶
The effectiveness with which AVs have been able to test and spread despite local municipalities being fairly luddite about them does provide positive evidence for the idea that states are the right level of government for many of these decisions. If this had been entirely up to Bay Area municipalities it would have been infeasible, and this outcome and the lives consequently saved will be due to state-level decision-makers being able to make better decisions than local municipal decision-makers.

If the urban sprawl of the Bay Area were (correctly, in my opinion) represented as a single fused city-county like Tokyo, I think we would have better governance, but highly fragmented municipalities means we have a lot of free-rider vetos.

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jerlam ◴[22 Nov 25 00:30 UTC] No.46010804[source]▶
I don't see any reason that individual Bay Area cities cannot pass laws against Waymo operating there. Why they would do so is a different matter. I'm hopeful though.
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1. arjie ◴[22 Nov 25 00:35 UTC] No.46010840[source]▶
I suspect the reason is that California cities do not, in fact, have control over this aspect of regulation. I won't claim to be a policy expert, but the failed SB-915[0] seems to imply that this is the case. SB-915 was a proposed bill to allow cities to permit or regulate AVs. It seems reasonable that if a law was attempted to be passed to permit cities to regulate AVs and the bill fails even after modification that it was the case that cities were previously unable to regulate AVs and cities remain unable to regulate AVs. Absent greater knowledge on the subject, that is.

0: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...