A forbidden U-turn in San Bruno has brought to reality and a legal void: Who’s going to pay the fines for traffic violations if no one is driving the car? In California, robotaxis and autonomous vehicles are being pushed by artificial intelligence and autonomous driving systems, are already part of the daily traffic.
Their promise is to reduce human mistakes behind the wheel, but it turns out that, just as humans do, these cars are accumulating traffic violations as well. And under old norms, they can only be assigned to human drivers, so when the driver is an invisible machine, who are the cops going to fine?
I guess it’s normal; who would have thought that one day this would actually happen? But reality is here to tell us that cars are driving by themselves now, and we’re behind on the rules.
To close this breach, the California Assembly Bill 1777 proposes responsibility in a different way. They want to give non-compliance notices to those who command the vehicles, which means the companies. Waymo and Zoox will be receiving notifications everytime their cars are not respecting the law. Which puts back responsibility where it should to be.
Responsibility on the streets
In San Bruno, a self-driving car made a U turn where there was a clear sign of “No U-turn zone”. The agents stop the car to find out that there was nobody on the drivers seat. Under California law, the fines can be given to only human drivers, so this particular traffic violation had no responsable and somehow an unfair technological impunity.
The same situation is repeating in other places. In cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles, they have documented episodes testing traditional traffic laws.
Until now, autonomous vehicles have proven to be very efficient, they’re always available, never tired, don’t get distracted by any means. They execute their tasks well, but security has to be priority number one. And without the responsibility of following and respecting the law accident can happen.
How the new Bill works
California Assembly Bill 1777 is offering a responsible route, and starting July 2026, “autonomous vehicle non-compliance” notices are going to be sen directly to the operators entity. So companies like Waymo and Zoox will become responsible for responding to the authorities when their vehicles will not be following the law. According to the project, these notices will be similar in practice to a traffic fine ticket.
But further than putting a name to the situation, this can help the whole system generally, everytime something’s not following the right instructions, the operators will get notified, which can work as an alarm that tells them there’s something to correct. In fact, Waymo has stated that their goal is to achieve a car that would respond just like a human would do facing an infraction.
There’s even discussion around adding a white color to traffic lights to let people know when there are too many autonomous vehicles rolling and make circulation easier.
A simple model that others can adopt
This might be a first example, but more than that, it’s an opportunity to inspire others and set a base for future situations. It’s time to mix traffic laws and autonomous vehicles and robotaxis.
For the public, this is also good news, because it means safety. The more self-driving cars out there being responsible, the lesser the risk of incidents.
What once we thought impossible is today finding its ways through the traffic laws, putting together the human and the machine… now, I just can’t stop thinking about what the law’s going to do if cars start flying one day, can you?