California Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a bill that for the first time allows testing on public roads of self-driving vehicles with no steering wheels, brake pedals or accelerators. A human driver as backup is not required, but the vehicles will be limited to speeds of less than 35 mph.
The legislation applies only to a pilot project by the Contra Costa Transportation Authority at an autonomous-vehicle testing facility at the former Concord Naval Weapons Station, and at a San Ramon business park containing public roads.
At the “GoMentum Station” in the former naval facility, Honda has been testing self-driving cars, and the firm Otto Motors, a division of a Canadian robotics company, has been working on autonomous trucks. The Transportation Authority has said Google and Apple have expressed interest in using the facility.
At Bishop Ranch business park, the project involves 12-person worker-transport shuttles made by a French company called Easy Mile.
The new law allowing full autonomy in limited areas comes amid an ongoing debate about whether driverless cars, with no human intervention possible, are better than an incremental approach in which technologies such as lane-keeping and emergency braking are added step by step.
The issue has seen Google’s pursuit of full autonomy pitted against the approaches of Tesla and many other carmakers whose semi-autonomous vehicles are already on public roads.
“Any governmental body endorsing fully autonomous driving or testing of fully autonomous driving is a step in the direction that could be favorable for Google,” said RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian. “There’s a lot of debate around whether fully autonomous is the right step in the near term versus that more incremental approach.
“Having the ability to test more fully autonomous technology is going to help resolve that debate. It could be that during these tests they find that this technology needs a lot of work.”
The bill was introduced by Assemblymember Susan Bonilla of the East Bay’s 14th Assembly District.
