California Senate Bill 1246 would disrupt autonomous vehicle regulatory modernization and impose rigid mandates

A version of the following public comment was submitted to California State Senator Dave Cortese on April 17, 2026.

Our assessment of Senate Bill 1246 is based on more than 15 years of research on the law and policy related to driving automation. We share the goal of ensuring the safe operation of automated driving systems on public roadways; however, we believe SB 1246 is deficient in several key respects.

Senate Bill 1246 would reset the two-year regulatory modernization process nitiated by initiated by Assembly Bill 1777

In 2024, Assembly Bill (AB) 1777 was enacted and established various new requirements on motor vehicles equipped with automated driving systems, including emergency response interactions, enhanced incident reporting, issuance of traffic citations, and geofencing.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is tasked with implementing many of the provisions of AB 1777 and worked to incorporate these new legislative requirements into a regulatory modernization package. The DMV took public comment on the three iterations of its proposed regulations between April 2025 and February 2026. The final regulations are expected to be published in the coming months.

The DMV’s detailed process sought and incorporated public feedback in a careful and deliberative manner. SB 1246 would impose requirements related to remote assistance, first responder interactions, emergency response protocols, and recordkeeping requirements that contradict those contained in AB 1777 and the DMV’s pending regulatory modernization package. This would disrupt the regulatory modernization process that has been ongoing for two years and add significant uncertainty for manufacturers and operators of vehicles equipped with automated driving systems.

Senate Bill 1246 eschews performance-based operating requirements for arbitrary prescriptions

SB 1246 imposes a number of California-unique requirements, including those related to vehicle design that are properly the responsibility of federal automobile safety regulators. A troubling theme emerges throughout the bill, which is that many of the provisions would impose inflexible mandates with arbitrary criteria in lieu of performance-based specifications. This approach is generally recognized as poor regulatory practice. At the federal level, government-unique prescriptive standards have been explicitly opposed by a bipartisan consensus since the Clinton administration, when the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 passed Congress by unanimous voice vote, and the White House Office of Management and Budget issued Circular A-119.

Examples of SB 1246’s arbitrary and prescriptive mandates include: 

• Sec. 38801(a): Imposes the same requirements on autonomous vehicle operators who employ remote drivers or remote assistants, despite the vast differences between the tasks of these roles. It would also require remote drivers and assistants to hold a California driver’s license, an arbitrary geography-based restriction that has been rejected by states across the country;
• Sec. 28801(b): Requires autonomous vehicle operators to maintain at least a one-to-three ratio of remote drivers or assistants per vehicle, despite the aforementioned dramatic differences between these remote roles as well as a disconnect from operating performance metrics (e.g., requests for assistance per hour/trip/mile); and
• Sec. 38802(a)(2): Requires autonomous vehicle operators to ensure local incident technicians are able to respond within 10 minutes of an incident, regardless of geography or traffic conditions.

A better path forward

While the intent behind SB 1246 is noble and we share the author’s goal of advancing automated driving system safety, we believe it is important to carefully evaluate the forthcoming implementation of AB 1777 and the DMV’s regulatory modernization package before future technically sound modifications to California’s autonomous vehicle policy framework can be considered responsibly.

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