California governor vetoes bill requiring human drivers in autonomous trucks

A California bill requiring autonomous heavy-duty robo-trucks to have human drivers was vetoed late Friday by state Governor Gavin Newsom. The bill, Assembly Bill 316, was a worker-backed bipartisan effort in the state to curb the number of fully autonomous trucks on the road, and to save jobs.

As reported by Reuters, Newsom's veto of the bill will come as a relief to companies like Aurora and Daimler Truck that are testing and developing driverless trucks to haul goods. The veto can overturned by the state legislature with a two-thirds vote but the last time this happened in California was in 1979, so the chances that it does are slim.

SEE ALSO: California DMV asks for fewer self-driving cars on the road

California is not the only state that allows for the testing and use of driverless trucks, but, as Reutersnotes, it is among the few states that ban autonomous trucks over 10,000 pounds.

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The Teamsters issued a press release in the hours before the veto. It contains a warning from one member named Mike Di Bene that a veto would mean Newsom had turned "his back on the safety of 39 million Californians," that it would put "every California driver in danger," and that it would open the door to Big Tech "eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs."

"Assembly Bill 316 is unnecessary for the regulation and oversight of heavy-duty autonomous vehicle technology in California," Newsom wrote in his veto message Friday. "Existing law provides sufficient authority to create the appropriate regulatory framework."

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The driverless car debate has heated up in the past few years in California and this recent veto will only add more fuel to the fire. Just last month, the California DMV asked tech companies to decrease the number of driverless cars on the road after two robocars crashed in San Francisco. This was just days after the city granted approval for the 24/7 operation of two robotaxi companies.