California's Democratic governor has vetoed a bill that would have required human drivers to be on board self-driving trucks.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill to require human drivers on board self-driving trucks, a measure that union leaders and truck drivers said would save hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state.

The legislation vetoed Friday night would have banned self-driving trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilograms) — ranging from UPS delivery vans to massive big rigs — from operating on public roads unless a human driver is on board.

Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, head of the California Labor Federation, said driverless trucks are dangerous and called Newsom’s veto shocking. She estimates that removing drivers would cost a quarter million jobs in the state.

  • myusernameblows@lemmy.world
    82·
    1 year ago

    We’re talking about big rigs here, there’s already rarely anything a driver can do to “deal with” something like a load coming loose or a flat tire anyways. All you can really do is hope you’ve noticed the problem soon enough to get off the highway, which is obviously something that an AI would be better at with its many sensors and lack of distractability.

    Even in situations where the truck ends up stuck in the middle lane of a big freeway, it’s not like the driver can just get out and push it off to the side of the road. Except for a few pretty rare cases, all the driver does is set up some pylons and then sit in the sleeper and wait for the heavy duty tow truck to show up.