Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1246 into law, requiring autonomous vehicle companies including Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox to provide local, on-the-ground support to emergency services when their robotaxis cause problems1,2. Companies face penalties if a robotaxi blocks police or firefighters for more than 30 minutes.
The law takes effect in July 2028.
What the law requires
SB 1246 mandates that AV developers notify cities and other local jurisdictions about the location and status of vehicles during system-wide failures. Companies must also deploy local incident technicians who can assist with AV accidents and obstructions.
A separate provision targets remote drivers, the operators who directly control a vehicle from a distance. Under the law, remote drivers must be located in the United States and hold a U.S. driver's license. Tesla is the only company that has publicly reported having operators capable of taking direct control of its robotaxis. Waymo and other companies have said they use remote assistance in which the driverless system continues to operate the controls while an employee provides guidance.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles will set additional guidelines, including required response times for companies.
The incidents behind the law
The legislation follows a series of incidents in California in which robotaxis broke down and disrupted traffic, drove into crime scenes, or impeded first responders. The bulk of those incidents involved Waymo, the largest robotaxi operator in the U.S., which has about 4,000 autonomous vehicles in its commercial fleet across the country, with roughly 1,200 in the San Francisco Bay Area. A TechCrunch investigation earlier this year identified incidents in which Waymo relied on first responders to manually drive its vehicles when they encountered problems.
Those incidents prompted state and federal lawmakers to call for stricter rules governing robotaxis, particularly around interactions with first responders. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent a letter to AV developers demanding that they develop solutions to the problem.
A Waymo spokesperson said the company is committed to making roads safer in California and is "grateful for the amendments made to the bill," adding that the amendments "ensure autonomous vehicle operators can still feasibly serve Californians". Waymo and Zoox said they would comply with the new rules.
ANALYSIS The law's requirement for U.S.-based, U.S.-licensed remote drivers adds a labor-localization constraint that could affect how AV companies staff their remote operations as fleets scale. The 30-minute penalty threshold and the mandate for local incident technicians shift a portion of emergency-response burden from municipal first responders back to the companies whose vehicles create the obstruction.