Labor unions are asking California’s Legislature for a new law requiring human drivers to be present in all self-driving semi-trucks.
Aguiar-Curry said for now she’s happy to let companies test driverless trucks away from California‘s highways, citing her constituents’ safety concerns.The business case for autonomous trucks is the vast reduction in labor costs when humans are no longer needed to do the driving. Replacing the estimated 350,000 truck drivers who work in California alone would lead to huge cost savings.
Farrah has said: “Autonomous trucks are safer than trucks operated by humans.” Former California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Childs, a paid consultant for the driverless vehicle industry group, recently told legislators that “in my opinion, autonomous technology is safer than a human driver.” AB 316 would “give us the opportunity to find out what are the glitches when we’re looking at large vehicles like this, and how we fix them so they don’t happen again,” Davies said.