California's Governor Vetoes State Ban on Driverless Trucks

&gt; “We will not sit by as bureaucrats side with tech companies, trading our safety and jobs for increased corporate profits,&quot; [California Labor Federation head Lorena Gonzalez] Fletcher, who called autonomous trucks dangerous, said in a statement.<p>We would obviously need to collect lots of data with safety drivers in place to determine how often they are necessary and how many accidents (both lethal and non-lethal) the trucks get into to determine if they really are dangerous, but this is a totally reasonable take from the head of the CFL.<p>&gt; &quot;We will continue to fight to make sure that robots do not replace human drivers and that technology is not used to destroy good jobs.”<p>Using union power to protect jobs just for the sake of protecting them is the thing that labor unions do that most people don&#x27;t support. See the recent writer&#x27;s strike for a good example -- many supported their desire for better wages and working conditions, but feelings were much more mixed on support for allowing AI to replace writers.

Good. I don&#x27;t see this as a safety issue so much as a make-work law. If a human would have to be in a self-driving truck at all times and ready to assume the controls on a moment&#x27;s notice, that&#x27;s basically human-driven with extra steps. Either the tech is good enough to be autonomous, or it&#x27;s not good enough to replace a human driver in the first place. And as a driver, I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d want to be legally responsible for whatever boneheaded move a truck might take in the moments before I could regain control over it. &quot;Hey, I know it was the AI that decided to swerve into the crowd of toddlers, and you only had 300ms to respond, but you <i>were</i> the one sitting in the driver&#x27;s seat...&quot;<p>Now, I&#x27;m not thrilled with the idea of ending human jobs without giving those people a way to survive. Even if I weren&#x27;t sympathetic to those hard-working people who are ready and willing to do the tough jobs that keep society running -- and I hope it&#x27;s obvious that I <i>am</i> -- enlightened self interest means that I don&#x27;t want all of to be unemployed and hungry. That&#x27;s bad for <i>everyone</i>. I also wish we shipped more freight via train, which is cheaper and <i>way</i> more environmentally friendly. Making it easier and cheaper to ship even more via truck is probably the wrong path to optimize.<p>But all that aside, I <i>still</i> think this is a well intended but ultimately wrong solution. Frankly, it seems like it&#x27;d be cheaper and more efficient to pay those drivers to stay home rather than pay them to perch in a self-driving truck.

Why is this veto controversial? If autonomous trucks are proved to be just as safe as a human driven truck, why should there be a safety driver.

It&#x27;s obvious that advances in technology have been &quot;taking away jobs&quot; for centuries. The automobile must have been hell on farriers, leather workers, stables and hay suppliers, but it obviously created mechanics, gas stations and all the rest. Asbestos miners lost their jobs en-mass, as are coal miners now.<p>The writing is on the wall that self-driving vehicles are coming (taxis, transport trucks, etc.). We could argue all week about the timeline for <i>when</i> exactly, but the important thing is they are coming.<p>The really important part of this is how will society handle the &quot;loss of jobs&quot;. Are we already preparing for this eventuality? Are we gearing up to re-train truck drivers, are we gearing up to not have thousands of taxi drivers per city and all the stuff that comes along with that (added taxes, medallions, etc.)<p>Do we want the protection of jobs to limit our use of technology?<p>Should we block progress just so people can keep jobs that are not healthy for them in the first place?

Are people on HN really that cynical to say that autonomous logic can&#x27;t navigate a highway?<p>These trucks are gonna be used for depot to depot transfers with human drivers taking over for urban &#x2F; last mile destinations.

A human is psychologically incapable of paying attention for hours on end to take over from the AI at the spur of the moment. It would be easier for a human to just drive the truck.

&gt; On the other hand, as the Associated Press notes, California Labor Federation head Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher estimates that not requiring human drivers in trucks would cost around 250,000 jobs. “We will not sit by as bureaucrats side with tech companies, trading our safety and jobs for increased corporate profits,&quot; Fletcher, who called autonomous trucks dangerous, said in a statement. &quot;We will continue to fight to make sure that robots do not replace human drivers and that technology is not used to destroy good jobs.”<p>At least they are being honest and not pretending it is about safety or consumer benefit.

I think it&#x27;s very reasonably to say that the legislature is not the right place at the moment to make these kind of decisions and in inflexible ways.<p>Whether or not safety drivers are better or required is something that depends on the technology and changes as it evolves. This is the kind of thing regulatory agencies are made for.

The question really is whether humans can be trusted to drive a truck at all. As soon as the technology allows, human-controlled trucks should be outlawed on freeways in California.

Andre Yang was a goober but we’re watching his stump speech about truckers getting unemployed en-masse by AI play out. Fascinating. His next part of the arguments was social unrest due to kicking to the curb one of the last $100k+ jobs for the average middle aged man outside of the information economy.<p>More accurately - Jaron Lanier’s views are playing out, which got picked up by Yang somehow.

The California DMV still has to allow this. They currently prohibit on-road testing of autonomous vehicles with trailers or over 10,000 pounds.<p>Right now, Waymo is probably the only autonomous operator with a good enough record to be trusted with heavy truck operations. Waymo announced back in July 2023 that they were abandoning truck testing for now, to focus on ride-hailing.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;waymo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;doubling-down-on-waymo-one.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;waymo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;doubling-down-on-waymo-one.ht...</a>

It&#x27;s crazy to me that we don&#x27;t even have automated trains, and we want automate trucks?<p>If we want to automate stuff, start with the easy stuff.

If an autonomous vehicle kills someone, who is reponsible and what does that mean?<p>I fear that unless the penalty for negligence is severe we will see a lot of bad situations.

Value of a human in the loop is not so much for driving but for eg fixing flats, clearing debris from cameras, etc. Less training needed, you probably only need one per convoy and they can do something else when the truck drives.

I&#x27;m convinced that autonomous trucks are the way to go. Free from fatigue, bad training, bad driving, and all the other things that come with human drivers, it could save lives, and maybe even reduce cost for everyone.

Mandating humans in autonomous vehicles is something expected expected out of a distopia like 1984. Absolutely hair-brained policy suggestion.

Good

He’s running for President. He’s going to continue to veto things he MAY want and know some will have majorities anyhow. I basically take what he does for now to be about zero percent authentic.