State of California Crashes Alphabet Inc Autonomous Car Party

The approach California’s Department of Motor Vehicles offered Wednesday in precedent-setting draft regulations is cautious, though it does allow that Californians could be behind the wheel of a self-driving auto by 2017.

The draft set of rules released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles for a public comment phase would not allow for legal operation of an autonomous auto being tested by Google because it lacks a steering wheel or foot pedal controls.

While the proposal is a way away from coming into effect, it may well push self-driving auto companies to look beyond California for testing and initial deployment of their vehicles.

The recommendations come as semi-autonomous features such as adaptive cruise control and emergency braking are increasingly common in new cars and manufacturers are seriously embracing the technology.

“Google may be in overdrive in its rush to develop robot cars, but the DMV has admirably served as traffic cop and proposed reasonable limits to protect public safety”, John Simpson, director of consumer watchdog Privacy Project, said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We’re gravely disappointed that California is already writing a ceiling on the potential for fully self-driving cars to help all of us who live here”, said Google in a statement. Alphabet’s businesses include connected home products maker Nest, venture capital arm Google Ventures, and Google X, the secretive research arm which houses the self-driving vehicle unit. “In this case, different people will have different opinions about where that balance is”, said Steven Shladover, program manager of California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH), a research and development program of UC Berkeley.

“Given the potential risks associated with the deployment of such a new technology, DMV believes that manufacturers need to obtain more experience in testing driverless vehicles on public roads prior to making this technology available to the general public”. In other words, no privately-owned autonomous cars. Google and traditional automakers advocated for manufacturer self-certification of safety, the standard for other cars. The cars have been involved in more than a dozen fender-benders, though the tech firm argues that they are being hit by drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the roads.

The latter company in particular would struggle to fully test any driverless taxi concepts it might have on local public roads given the new requirements.

Californian legislators are cautiously opening the door to driverless cars, but will insist that the vehicles are installed with steering wheels to protect against failures of the automatic system.

Meanwhile, a consumer group applauded the draft rules as appropriately cautious.