California will be able to cite autonomous vehicles for traffic violations. Will Arizona be next?

California officials will be able to cite autonomous vehicles for traffic violations starting on July 1; right now, they’re only able to give tickets to human drivers.

The change comes as a result of a law approved in 2024, and generally requires AVs to have a way for police officers, firefighters or other first responders to communicate with a human if the vehicle is doing something illegal, or they need the vehicle to be doing something other than what it’s doing.

Former California state Assemblymember Phil Ting sponsored the new law. He says he first started seeing AV’s testing in his San Francisco neighborhood six or seven years ago: first with a person inside, then without one and then as full-fledged robotaxis.

Full conversation

PHIL TING: And what we saw in San Francisco was a number of issues. We saw autonomous vehicles not knowing how to handle a live fire situation. So firefighters had blocked off the road, and you saw vehicles going into those areas.

I had a colleague, a state senator’s daughter was in a autonomous vehicle when the vehicle went into a live police situation, meaning the police were trying to block off the area. And so we just saw these situations where the vehicles were still learning what areas not to enter. And there was really no way for law enforcement or public safety to engage with these vehicles.

Obviously, you couldn’t tell people to pull over, couldn’t tell them what to do. There was no way to contact central dispatch, all of that. And so we worked on a bill to really find a statewide method to provide accountability to the autonomous vehicles, but also find a way that made sense.

At first, we were just simply going to allow the vehicles to be cited, just like you and I are cited if we violate something of the vehicle code. What we found out is the courts also didn’t really know how to handle them. So we needed to figure out a new way of doing it.

It made sense that DMV in our state regulates the autonomous vehicles, meaning before the autonomous vehicles can operate, they have to go through DMV, get licensing, get certification, get permitting. And then if there’s issues, then DMV can unilaterally pull the permit.

So when Cruise ran over a woman, dragged a woman, and then they were not forthright about all the circumstances leading up to that, their license to operate in California was pulled. And so DMV has that sole authority.

So it made sense that DMV, being the regulatory body, was the agency that really should have the citation authority as well. And so we set up a process where DMV, that that notification would happen at the local officer level, but DMV would be getting that information instantly, and then DMV would be setting up a process on how to handle the citations with the company so that they could take corrective action.

MARK BRODIE: This is such an interesting situation because we hear so often about technology sort of moving faster than policy can move. And as you referenced, this is not something that anyone had had to try to create policy for before.

What were the conversations like between you and your colleagues and maybe even the industry in terms of: How do we go about doing this? Because you were doing it for the first time.

TING: Well, what’s interesting is I think there’s an acknowledgment that there were issues going on that needed to be addressed and that there needed to be some way to communicate with the cars. And so we set up a process where that the car companies would have a way to talk to the vehicles, should a police officer or firefighter have to talk to the vehicles, that there is a way to have two-way communication with the human back in central dispatch.

So we set up that process, that was very important so that people could pull over or law enforcement could tell a car to pull over and stop and immediately have that car sort of taken over. We also wanted to make sure that DMV ... was getting the information they needed to properly regulate the companies.

BRODIE: So you mentioned conversations with the companies, the autonomous vehicle companies. Were they generally on board with this? ... Do they understand the need to cite when traffic laws are violated?

TING: Absolutely, and they needed to know that they needed to have some process to really engage with public safety and law enforcement.

BRODIE: So I wonder if part of the goal here is when an autonomous vehicle, a Waymo or a Cruise or any vehicle, goes into a situation that it shouldn’t or breaks the law in some way, is part of the goal to get the company to maybe work on the software ... to make sure that those cars know they shouldn’t do it?

TING: Absolutely, that’s the number one goal, right? Because it’s not like they’re programmed to, ironically, you see the autonomous vehicles, they’re the only ones going the speed limit because they’re programmed to not go above the speed limit, right? So they don’t go above the speed limit. They’re going 25 miles an hour or 35 miles an hour, whatever the limit is, that’s what they are. They’re not programmed to go 10 miles over the limit.

And so absolutely, that was the whole point was to take corrective action, which is why the companies worked with me, because they knew the alternative could have been a ban. And they also knew the alternative could have been the Wild West where every local jurisdiction would start to try to govern these cars differently.

BRODIE: It’s an interesting point you make about how the cars are programmed to obviously go the speed limit. They stop at red lights, they stop at stop signs. They’re not texting or drinking or anything.

TING: And they pull over, like all the Uber drivers don’t pull over, even if they should pull over to pick up a passenger, they just park in the middle of the street, which drives me a little crazy. And yet the Waymos ... are programmed, "Hey, you pull over to find an open spot so you’re out of traffic."

BRODIE: Yeah. Well, so I wonder then if the situations — and you alluded to this at the very beginning — the situations that this is really meant for are sort of unusual situations, things you don’t come across every day that an autonomous vehicle might just not have any idea how to handle.

TING: Well, I would say I don’t know that they’re unusual situations because having firefighters block off a road or having police officers do that, they’re happening every single day, right? So it’s not like this is a natural disaster. They are just not the most common occurrences. And so the cars didn’t have the proper programming, proper protocol. And so in essence, I think there wasn’t a lot of thought paid to how these cars were going to interact with other human beings around the vehicles.

BRODIE: So in that kind of situation where a firefighter or police officer needs an autonomous vehicle to not be there, is there a way for them to get the vehicle to move? Do they just write down the license plate and contact DMV?

TING: ... No, the way the bill was written is, no ... the deal in the bill was, which is in there, that they’re supposed to set up some two-way communication so that the officers can immediately engage with the vehicles and engage with a human being, so that they can tell the vehicles to get out of that area.

BRODIE: OK. Is it your expectation that after some amount of time that the companies will have programmed their vehicles to address all of these situations and police officers won’t have to keep citing?

TING: It’s not a matter of over a certain amount of time. My expectation is once it is brought to their attention, that they are taking immediate corrective action. And that if they’re not, then DMV is going to be tracking that and making sure that they take corrective action. And if they don’t, they’re going to get their license revoked. That’s my expectation, just like — it’s no different than if you don’t take corrective action in terms of your driving ability, at some point you get your license revoked.

BRODIE: Right. But I guess in terms of, you mentioned how at least some of these situations were things that maybe the programmers hadn’t quite conceived of yet when they were writing the software. So I would imagine that over time, there will be just fewer and fewer of those situations arising.

TING: Absolutely. My expectation is, yeah, once they can put that into the program, they’ll be adaptable. And the nice thing is they’ll be adaptable across the fleet. It’s not like they have 1,000 drivers and they have to train 1,000 drivers. Once the program is put in place, it should work across their entire fleet.

BRODIE: Right. Have you had conversations with policymakers in other states about this?

TING: I have not.

BRODIE: So a place like Arizona, which obviously also has a lot of autonomous vehicles, they haven’t reached out to you or anything?

TING: Nobody has. Yeah.

BRODIE: Are you surprised by that?

TING: No, not really. I think there’s a lot of hesitation to be — I think it’s kind of ironic. Most states follow California, but very rarely do they want to admit that they’re following California.

BRODIE: All right, we’ll have to leave it there. That is Phil Ting, a former member of the California State Assembly. Phil, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

TING: Thanks, Mark. Appreciate the interview.