California closes the driverless car loophole — manufacturers now get the ticket

California’s DMV is rolling out rules on 1 July that let police issue a ‘notice of AV noncompliance’ directly to the manufacturer when an autonomous vehicle breaks traffic law. The change closes a gap that left officers unable to act on incidents like the Waymo that made an illegal U-turn in front of San Bruno police last September — with no driver present, there was no one to cite, so the department just called the company to report a ‘glitch’.

The regulations also force AV operators to answer police and emergency calls within 30 seconds and impose penalties for vehicles entering active emergency zones. Both requirements respond to concrete operational failures: a December San Francisco blackout left Waymo cars stalled across busy intersections, and the SF Fire Department has repeatedly flagged robotaxis obstructing emergency response.

The shift matters because it reframes accountability. Until now, AV misbehavior was treated as a customer-service issue between police and a corporate hotline. Treating the manufacturer as the legal driver — citable, fineable, on a clock to respond — is the first enforcement model that actually scales to a city full of driverless fleets, and it sets a template other states with Waymo, Tesla, and similar deployments will likely follow.