The Scali Law Firm urges DMV to allow driverless cars

Published on

Contributors

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3, 2016 – As scores of Los Angeles-area residents, many of them blind or disabled, lined up Tuesday to urge the Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) to allow completely self-driving cars, The Scali Law Firm’s autonomous vehicle expert, John Swenson, urged officials not to stand in the way of progress.

“I urge you to take a forward-looking view and craft language that doesn’t hinder the development and innovation of technology,” said Swenson, an attorney at The Scali Law Firm, to DMV regulators at a hearing in downtown Los Angeles.

Swenson says he stands with tech companies like Google that oppose language drafted by the DMV late last year that would force autonomous cars in California to have a capable driver behind the wheel, ready to take over. Google threatened to pull its test vehicles out of the California market if the proposal becomes law.

Swenson went on to say that roads will become safer as the potential for human error is removed from the equation, so the DMV should not apply an “incremental approach, but rather use language that contemplates, anticipates and allows for the innovation of technology.”

DMV officials urged Swenson to submit alternatives to the draft regulations. The Scali Law Firm represents auto dealers across the state, and was recently named California’s top boutique automotive law firm by the Daily Journal.

In an article published in December by LAW360, Swenson shared a vision of how motorists will shift en masse to driverless cars within just a few years, especially once insurance companies start offering much lower premiums to operators of driverless cars.

“I predict that the issues will be carefully considered and worked out, because the end product will be the easing of so many bigger societal problems, especially the high cost we pay, in dollars and in human lives, for the kinds of car accidents that can only become more commonplace as we increasingly divert our attention from the road to all of the distractions on smartphones and other devices,” Swenson wrote.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Jonathan Fitzgarrald
(310) 601-6008