Uber fires back at California DMV in self-driving car spat

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

TECHNOLOGY NEWS | Fri Dec 16, 2016 | 8:46pm EST

Uber fires back at California DMV in self-driving car spat

By Heather Somerville | SAN FRANCISCO

Uber Technolgies Inc [UBER.UL] on Friday again defied a demand by California regulators that the ride-services firm apply for a permit to test self-driving cars, setting up a possible legal battle.

Uber said its self-driving cars, unveiled to the public on Wednesday, would remain on the road, and reiterated its defiance of an order from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to "cease" operations.

"We respectfully disagree with the California Department of Motor Vehicles legal interpretation of today's autonomous regulations," Anthony Levandowski, vice president of Uber's Advanced Technologies Group, said on a call with reporters.

The California Attorney General added a warning on Friday, sending Uber a letter requesting it "immediately remove its 'self-driving' vehicles from the state's roadways" until the company complies with regulations. If not, the Attorney General will seek injunctive relief, the letter said.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving-regulations-idUSKBN14600Z

[zippythepinhead]

1. More lost jobs

people should boycott them. Who is going to be left to afford to ride in them?

[Retrograde]

2. Is this the same self-driving car that was caught running red lights in SF?

The Guardian had an article about Uber's car violating traffic laws a couple of days ago. But Uber has a long history of not paying attention to regulations if it doesn't feel like it.

[lame54]

3. Pull the cars over and confiscate them

[FrodosNewPet]

4. Leader of Ubers self-driving car initiative: Self driving cars cannot drive themselves

Statement from Anthony Levandowski on Self-Driving in San Francisco

https://newsroom.uber.com/statement-from-anthony-levandowski-on-self-driving-in-san-francisco/

December 16, 2016 Posted by Anthony Levandowski

Thank you all for joining our call today. Let me start by saying that we value our relationship with elected officials and regulators both in San Francisco and Sacramento. We also understand the need to regulate Uber’s services, and have consistently supported progressive, common sense regulations for both ridesharing and self-driving technology across the United States.

But we respectfully disagree with the California Department of Motor Vehicles legal interpretation of today’s autonomous regulations, in particular that Uber needs a testing permit to operate its self-driving cars in San Francisco. Let me explain why.

The regulations apply to “autonomous vehicles”. And autonomous vehicles are defined as cars equipped with technology that can — and I quote — “drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator.” But the self-driving Ubers that we have in both San Francisco and Pittsburgh today are not capable of driving “without … active physical control or monitoring”.

From a technology perspective, self-driving Ubers operate in the same way as vehicles equipped with advanced driver assist technologies, for example Tesla auto-pilot and other OEM’s traffic jam assist. This type of technology is commonplace on thousands of cars driving in the Bay Area today, without any DMV permit at all. That is because California law expressly excludes from its law vehicles that have “collision avoidance” or “other similar systems that enhance safety or provide driver assistance” and, like our self-driving cars, are “not capable, collectively or singularly, of driving the vehicle without the active control or monitoring of a human operator.”

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