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Uber Pulls Self-Driving Cars From San Francisco, Sends Them To Arizona (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: Uber is moving its self-driving pilot to Arizona, one day after the California Department of Motor Vehicles ordered the autonomous vehicles off the roads in San Francisco. "Our cars departed for Arizona this morning by truck," an Uber spokeswoman said Thursday afternoon in a statement. "We'll be expanding our self-driving pilot there in the next few weeks, and we're excited to have the support of Governor Ducey." After starting its San Francisco pilot on Dec. 14, the ride-hailing company angered the mayor and officials at the DMV by refusing to get a permit to operate its self-driving cars. And so, around noon on Thursday, a fleet of Uber self-driving cars passed through the South of Market area on the backs of several flat-bed trucks. Commuters gawked at the fleet with their distinctive hoods, backing up traffic as the convoy slowly drove by. In a statement Thursday, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey called California's regulations "burdensome" and said Arizona welcomes Uber's self-driving car pilot with "open arms." "While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses," he said. It is unclear which city -- or cities -- the cars are headed to.
Unregulated self-driving cars. What could go wrong?
"While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses," he said"
What he meant was that a campaign contribution was made by relevant lobbyists.
What a surprise -- regulation works!
California regulates self-driving cars (the part of regulation Uber most likely didn't like was the reporting requirement), and when Uber didn't want to play by the rules, they went somewhere that apparently doesn't care about making their public streets into unregulated test grounds for new technology.
Arizona politicians are going to have massive egg on their faces if somebody gets seriously hurt or killed from the experiments.
The regulation-vs-risk debate is rather involved and complicated, but politically they are taking a big gamble.
They would be better off leveling with voters. Example:
"Arizona is willing to accept some risk to advance our economy and the entrepreneurial spirit of Arizona. We are sons of pioneers; exploration and its risks are part of who we are."
Table-ized A.I.
Uber's "justification" for not getting the autonomous driving license that California requires for self-driving vehicles, a license that 20 other companies already have, was that their vehicles were "not sophisticated enough." Guess that was right, given the numerous reports in the past weeks of autonomous Uber cars failing to stop at street lights and signs.
Good luck Arizona; your governor just sold the safety of your streets out for a quick soundbite.
If the goal of the regulation was to chase away people who are doing cool stuff, this regulation worked.
Public streets aren't meant for "cool stuff", do that on an off-road track. If you want to do cool stuff on the streets, then expect some oversight -- a $150 permit and reporting requirements sounds like pretty light regulation for something that's being tested alongside the general public.
I prefer regulations that promote doing things with an appropriate level of safety. By that standard, this regulation failed - they aren't doing it California at all now. That's why I prefer dealing with regulatory agencies with relatively few people they regulate, such as the local ATF and FAA offices. (Versus the DMV). They tend to engage licensees to find ways to do things safely, rather than declaring you can't do it at all unless you do it exactly *this* way, a way that doesn't work
The FAA has a $15B budget, and has over 7000 people working in their aviation safety division alone -- they issue on average 5 - 10 Airworthiness Directives per day. Are you sure that's a good example of a hands-off, low oversight agency? Try to get a GPS certified for use in the air, and try the same thing for a car, and tell me which agency was easier to deal with (hint, the California DMV doesn't care as long as you don't hang it on the windshield).
Trust me when I tell you the FAA is way, way worse. I had family running a small business doing aerial photography with drones over a decade ago -- when the FAA had no rules at all about drones. The person piloting the drones was an actual plane pilot and put in a flight plan for every flight.
We're talking cutting edge helicopter drones with high-end cameras and zero regulation. The business was booming -- real estate agencies contracted with them, police agencies used it for tracking fugitives. YET, the local competition -- full sized aircraft photographers complained to the FAA constantly (and lied about location, times, and flight plans in their complaints). The FAA drug their feet for YEARS creating regulations that my family wanted so they could show they were within the regulations (since there weren't any -- and no rules at all to go by). Instead of creating regs, they basically had a moratorium on flying drones for those without military clearance until they could create them. So, my family members lost their business over threats from the FAA, allegations, and eventually the moratorium.
Now, those family members fly drones for a military contractor.... again, cutting edge stuff, only this time top secret. Things end up working out just fine, but if not for the FAA's incompetence and poor regulation of an emerging industry, my family could have been franchising aerial video and photography services long before it became so common that anyone could fly a drone without any aviation experience.
Good riddance to to the Bay Area with its tech-hating protesters, and welcome to Arizona!
Since Uber is currently losing $700 million per quarter, and they just backed out of their Chinese investment which means the loss is probably more like $1.2 billion per quarter, I don't think we'll have Uber around to worry about much longer.
The real reason they didn't want to register their cars in California (they'll still have to register them in Arizona, by the way), is that they would be required to report any accidents they were involved in to the state, and they didn't want the public to find out how shitty their robot cars really are.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So where do you carry out the live experiments to slide down that learning curve?
Someplace where driving is complicated and where you have a lot of opportunities to kill people like California, or someplace where there's enough room and people are sparse like Arizona?
No prizes for coming up with Arizona.
When those autonomous cars have proven themselves there is ample time to allow them in more densely populated areas. Which is where those cars can generate the most revenue.
Seriously, what's the problem with that?
Here, I'll play.
Let's talk about tinting windows. In California, you can tint a car's back windows and rear window with whatever you want. Front passenger windows have to have at least 70% transparency. No approval necessary. What does it take to get an STC to put window tint on an aircraft?
Let's talk about engine systems. In California, you can replace an ignition system with another ignition with any system designated as valid by the manufacturer of that ignition system. Go look at the ElectroAir electronic ignition STC: you still need a magneto system, and that STC was probably quite expensive to get.
Let's talk about upholstery. In California, there appears to be no regulation on upholstery for car interiors. The FAA requires certain fire resistance, and the lab testing is apparently around $1000.
Let's talk about carriage for hire. In California, Uber and Lyft appear to operate without regulation. The FAA would nail you requiring an Air Carrier certificate (Part 135) if you did what they did in aviation.