SACRAMENTO, Dec. 14 (UPI) — The California Department of Motor Vehicles issued a warning of sorts to rideshare company Uber on Wednesday, apparently for wading too far into the waters of testing self-driving vehicles in San Francisco.
The department issued a statement Wednesday that said it “encourages the responsible exploration of self-driving cars.”
Uber launched its rideshare service with autonomous vehicles in San Francisco on Wednesday — without obtaining any permit from the state government.
“We understand that there is a debate over whether or not we need a testing permit to launch self-driving Ubers in San Francisco. We have looked at this issue carefully and we don’t believe we do,” Anthony Levandowski, Uber’s director of self-driving, said in a blog post Wednesday.
The DMV listed on its website several operators who have obtained an autonomous driving testing permit, including Mercedes Benz, Google, Tesla, Nissan, BMW, Ford and Honda.
Uber, though, which first launched self-driving service in Pittsburgh in September, said a permit is only necessary for vehicles that operate without human supervision.
“The rules apply to cars that can drive without someone controlling or monitoring them. For us, it’s still early days and our cars are not yet ready to drive without a person monitoring them,” Levandowski said.
“But there is a more fundamental point — how and when companies should be able to engineer and operate self-driving technology,” he continued. “Several cities and states have recognized that complex rules and requirements could have the unintended consequence of slowing innovation. Pittsburgh, Arizona, Nevada and Florida in particular have been leaders in this way, and by [not requiring test permits] have made clear that they are pro technology.
“Our hope is that California, our home state and a leader in much of the world’s dynamism, will take a similar view.”
