California Needs to Hit the Brakes on Minimum Staffing Requirements for Automated Vehicles
Regulation is often one, two or even three steps behind technology’s pace of development. But occasionally, a policymaker will seek to move proactively — too proactively — to address a policy challenge that may never come to pass. Such is the case with Senate Bill 336, prepared by state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, which seeks […]
California Utilities Want Taxpayers and Ratepayers to Bail Them Out
SACRAMENTO — It’s a bedrock principle of American law that parties responsible for a harm compensate those affected by the damage they’ve caused. Yet, based on their recent lobbying activities within the halls of the state’s Capitol, some of California’s investor-owned utilities, including PG&E, appear to be operating under a different assumption. They seem to […]
New ZEV Bill Would Hurt the Least Well Off Californians
Some bad ideas go away others just morph from bad to worse. Last year, Senator Nancy Skinner (D – Berkeley) introduced legislation (SB 802) that would have required certain highly automated vehicles to be zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) as a requirement of their registration. Fortunately, that effort was amended into irrelevance and eventually failed. This year, […]
California Legislature should be cautious about disrupting the ridesharing balance
When riders hop in an Uber or a Lyft, services that operate as so-called “transportation network companies,” insurance is usually the last thing on their mind. They’ve got places to be. But according to a joint study by the California Department of Insurance and the California Public Utilities Commission, insurance might be more important than consumers usually […]
AB 1679: Reining in Insurance Department’s Regulatory Authority
After years of falling rates, the cost of auto insurance is now once again increasing across the nation. The problems of distracted driving and rising repair expenses are acting together to force rates up. Legislators in Capitol buildings throughout the country are directing their attention at the trend in an effort to ensure that their constituents have […]
Bill Handicaps the Self-Driving Car Industry
Regulating something before it even exists is as tricky as it is ill-advised. But that’s exactly what California state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, wants to do with the nascent self-driving car industry. Skinner has introduced S.B. 802, legislation that would require any fully or almost fully autonomous vehicles to be certified as “zero emissions”—that is, […]