LA City Council calls for more regulations for self-driving cars

A Los Angeles council member introduced a motion to establish regulations for self-driving cars operating within city limits Wednesday. 

"The last ten years have seen us evolve alongside the app-driven economy and its inherent complexities," said Councilwoman Traci Park, who introduced the motion. "Autonomous vehicles present a parallel trajectory, and we're poised to meet this challenge head-on, learning from past experiences."  

The motion instructed city staff to compile a report to outline state mandates that prevent the city from regulating autonomous vehicles and to find ways to leverage data collected by self-driving car companies. 

"Profit margins should never eclipse the safety of our constituents and workforce," Park said. "While Los Angeles stands as a beacon of progress, consistently adopting transformative technologies, we must be able to effectively address and have the tools to regulate this new technology."

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has received 671 autonomous vehicle collision reports throughout the state since 2014, 126 of which happened this year. 

In 2023, 12 of these crashes happened in Los Angeles County. However, all these crashes involved the self-driving car as the victim, according to the DMW reports. In two examples, bicyclists crashed into the vehicle and left the scene. In another, a pipe struck a car as it drove on the I-710 Freeway. 

General Motors recalled 950 vehicles from its autonomous vehicle division, Cruise, on Wednesday after one dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October.