California scraps rule requiring drivers in driverless cars

The self-driving autos of tomorrow are one step closer to being a reality of today. From the NYT:

The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles said Monday that it was eliminating a requirement for autonomous vehicles to have a person in the driver’s seat to take over in the event of an emergency. The new rule goes into effect on April 2.

California has given 50 companies a license to test self-driving vehicles in the state. The new rules also require companies to be able to operate the vehicle remotely — a bit like a flying military drone — and communicate with law enforcement and other drivers when something goes wrong.

The changes signal a step toward the wider deployment of autonomous vehicles. One of the main economic benefits praised by proponents of driverless vehicles is that they will not be limited by human boundaries and can do things like operate 24 hours in a row without a drop-off in alertness or attentiveness. Taking the human out of the front seat is an important psychological and logistical step before truly driverless cars can hit the road.

The requirement to have a human operator in a self-driving auto has been more a matter of politics and PR than science for a while now - all the available data showed that autonomous cars were safer when humans weren't able to override them, and all of the reported accidents involving autonomous autos have, so far anyway, been attributed to driver errors on the part of the humans in the other vehicles on the road. After all, with human driver error killing thousands of people each year in the U.S. alone, self-driving cars don't need to be perfect, they just need to be better than us, and the technology is already there.

At this point, it's worth remembering that California is typically more strict when it comes to automobile safety legislation than most other U.S. states. If CA is already on board with truly autonomous Autos, then it really is just a matter of time until self-driving Autos are on roads all over North America. And I, for one, will welcome our robot overlords.

I now return you to the Singularity, already in progress...