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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.
Amazing. Yet another example of a state totally and thoroughly owned by big business.
My one question is - will Trump drop Florida into the Gulf for allowing Big Business to run roughshod over the population, or promote it to the nation's capitol - for the same reason ?
redneck geek
... will Trump drop Florida into the Gulf for allowing Big Business to run roughshod over the population,... ?
By ignoring Climate Change Trump and his moronions will only need to let nature take its course – the Gulf will swallow Florida all by itself.
Uber could easily buy $5 million in insurance, of course, but there's little reason to do. If you destroy your house, you need insurance because you can't afford to replace the house amd everything in it out of your own pocket. If Uber causes a crash, they just pay the damages directly - no point in putting an insurance company in the middle.*
Generally, you should insure for costs you can't readily pay directly. For something you can afford, paying the insurance company's overhead and profit is stupid.** Uber has a billion dollars in their "shit happens" fund, so they can easily pay for any crash they cause. $5 million in insurance wouldn't change that at all.
Further, to save even more money, when you're unsure whether to buy insurance on something, such as a mobile phone, here's what you can do instead. Suppose the insurance costs $10. Put the $10 in an envelope marked "small insurance" or "shit happens". Do that every time you think about buying a protection plan - for tickets that offer cancellation insurance, whatever. After two years you might have $200 in your "small insurance" envelope. Right about then maybe your phone breaks. So you go get the money out of your envelope. You've bought insurance from yourself, and you don't pay the insurance company's profit (or the retailer's 50% commission on protection plans). Over time, your "shit happens" fund will grow and you'll find you no longer need to buy insurance on a $1,000 purchase, and aren't completely screwed when you're car breaks down.
* Which is what frustrates me about Obamacare. I can easily afford a $10 flu shot; I don't need insurance company overhead making it cost $25. I can pay $45 for a checkup, but insurance company paperwork makes it cost $65. I preferred ten years ago, when I could insure against major illness and injury for 75% less than I pay now.
** Even though Uber can easily self-insure for car accidents, an insurance company *might* provide some value by providing an objective, independent view of their safety protocols. The insurance company might say "to get insurance from us, you must make it safer by _______".
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?
That 150 dollar regulation is just another job killing liberal death tool. The America Ascendant think tank has conclusive data that because of that onerous regulation, 5 million people in California have been put out of work already.
Wake Up, America!!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Finally someone who understands why ObamaCare fucked the US.
When I came to the US, I had the best health care and insurance options, better than Europe's which I was forced to pay into and cheaper too. There are obviously retards that spent their money on drugs and alcohol over insurance but even at minimum wage you were always able to afford insurance if you *chose* to do so. Sure you would have to not spend money on frivolities or perhaps you'd even have to *gasp* cancel your cable bill. And yes, there are always people that fall through the cracks, happened in Europe too.
Now my insurance premiums and copays have risen 3-fold in the last 4 years to the point even with a decent income I can no longer comfortably afford going to the doctor if I'm not sick because I have to absorb the $10k out of pocket costs for the rest of my family. All ObamaCare has done is make the numbers look good. 2M people (10% of the population) now have insurance... except they still can't afford to go to a doctor and at this point there are many in 2017 that will rather pay the fine than the new premiums.
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So the fee on a driverless car is killing jobs?
What about the jobs that will be eliminated by these automobiles?
Because capitalism tends not to look at the long term.