No Drivers Anymore: California Allows Autonomous Vehicles Without Safety-Drivers Starting April

Mario Herger

With 50 companies testing several hundred autonomous cars on public roads, California is the hotbed in developing self-driving cars. But now the sunny state doubles down. Starting April 2nd companies will be able to drive cars without a safety driver in the vehicle.

California’s Office of Administrative Law approved a regulation by the California DMV that lays out a new approval process. On March 2nd the new regulation will be made public, 30 days later the first licenses can be issued.

The companies can apply for three types of licenses:

  1. Tests with a safety driver in the vehicle
  2. Tests without a safety driver in the vehicle
  3. Deployment of autonomous vehicles

So far California has over 1,000 safety drivers licensed. Waymo started tests without safety drivers in autumn 2017 in Chandler, Arizona. And GMCruise presented a car without steering wheel that the company wants to bring on the roads by 2019

This article has also been published in German.

Published by Mario Herger