Florida Senator: No Permit Needed For Driverless Cars In Florida (politifact.com)

In response to the California Department of Motor Vehicles ordering Uber's autonomous vehicles off the roads in San Francisco due to a lack of a permit, Florida state Sen. Jeff Brandes said he welcomes the company with open arms. Brandes tweeted: "Hey @Uber, unlike California we in Florida welcome driverless cars -- no permit required. #OpenForBusiness #FlaPol." PolitiFact reports: Several car companies are developing fully autonomous or self-driving cars operated by computers and testing them in some states. But it could be several years before they are broadly publicly available due to the cost, questions about liability and the technology and as state government officials grapple with oversight. While California's law requires a permit, that's not the case in Florida. "Florida has the least restrictive active state laws for the operation of autonomous vehicles," said John Terwilleger, an attorney at Gunster, Yoakley -- Stewart in West Palm Beach. Terwilleger represents a company that is involved in developing and using autonomous vehicles in Florida. In 2012, the Florida Legislature passed a law co-sponsored by Brandes that allowed a person with a valid driver's license to operate an autonomous vehicle. Before companies could test autonomous cars, they had to submit proof that they had $5 million in insurance. But in 2016, the Florida Legislature passed new rules that eliminated some of the previous requirements, including the $5 million in insurance. The new law also got rid of the requirement that a human operator be present in the vehicle, as long as an operator can be alerted in case of technology failure and stop the vehicle. Since there is no permit for autonomous vehicles, the state has no information regarding how many Floridians own one, said Beth Frady, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Florida law treats an autonomous vehicle in the same manner as any other motor vehicle operating on our roads, said Chris Spencer, a spokesman for Brandes. "There are no requirements for additional permitting, licensing, or approval from any state or local government body to operate an autonomous vehicle on our roads," he said. That's still the case, even though Florida was the location of the first fatality involving a self-driving car. In May, Joshua Brown, was killed when his Tesla while on autopilot crashed into a tractor-trailer in Williston.

Comments

Re: Can't be worse than FL human drivers

[OzPeter]

Actually Uber's argument is that their technology is not really fully autonomous and it's more like Tesla calling their system auto pilot.

So if you have Teslas driving on california why can't you have Ubers'?

Aside from the point that you seem to be conflating production vehicles with test rigs, how about the fact that Tesla went and got their $150/year permit in CA?

The following companies have their CA permits. Only Uber is being an uber douchebag about it.

Volkswagen Group of America
Mercedes Benz
Google
Delphi Automotive
Tesla Motors
Bosch
Nissan
GM Cruise LLC
BMW
Honda
Ford
Zoox Inc.
Drive.ai Inc.
Faraday & Future Inc.
Baidu USA LLC
Wheego Electric Cars Inc.
Valeo North America, Inc.
NextEV USA, Inc.
Telenav, Inc.
NVIDIA Corporation

Taken from the CA DMV site Application Requirements for Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program