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Perspective Shift

You read this story from where you sit.
Want to read it from somewhere else?

We'll re-present the same story as a thoughtful proponent of the tech-meets-legal-vacuum frame would. Not to convince you. To let you actually meet the argument.

Choose a vantage
Public-safety enforcement frame
California is finally closing an accountability gap that let driverless cars break traffic laws with impunity, giving police the tools to cite manufacturers directly and forcing companies to answer when their vehicles disrupt emergencies.
Regulatory leadership frame
California is setting the national benchmark for how to govern autonomous vehicles, building out the country's most comprehensive AV rulebook as the technology scales across its cities.
Tech-meets-legal-vacuum frame
Driverless cars have outpaced the basic machinery of traffic enforcement — officers literally have no one to hand a ticket to — and regulators are now scrambling to retrofit a legal system built around human drivers.
Retold from the other vantage
Steelman · slot C
Retrofitting law for driverless reality
A technology-and-law scholar would argue —
The San Bruno incident is the perfect illustration of what happens when deployment outruns doctrine: an officer witnesses a clear moving violation, initiates a stop, and then realizes the entire enforcement workflow — driver's license, signature, points on a record — assumes a human in the seat. Calling the company to report a "glitch" is not law enforcement; it is customer service. Fire officials reporting repeated interference with emergency response face the same vacuum. California's new notice-of-noncompliance mechanism is an honest acknowledgment that the vehicle code was built around human agency and now has to be re-plumbed for corporate fleets. Expect every jurisdiction with robotaxis to face the same retrofit problem.

If this read like a fair rendering of the argument — even when you disagree — it's doing its job. Steelmen aren't aimed at persuading you; they're aimed at what the other side actually believes when they're thinking clearly.