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A comment on The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing congestion. Parent comment

Re:The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing... by Kadin on Wednesday September 06, 2017 @02:01PM (#15185726)
It'd be interesting to see what the reaction is from people and companies in the field.

Preemption legislation seems a little premature, to me. Sure, it would stop states from hindering autonomous-vehicle development, e.g. to protect entrenched interests or because of irrational fears, but it could also stop states interested in being on the forefront of research from doing more interesting things.

It seems like the sort of thing you'd want when products were further along the development path and having a broad, harmonized-rules marketplace is necessary to move further, but not when most of the tech is still pretty early R&D work.

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Re:The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing... by ballenf on Wednesday September 06, 2017 @02:26PM (#15185936)
Preemption is needed most for nascent industries where the economics are uncertain. It gives investors more confidence to invest in an unproven technology if you can at least predict one aspect of the landscape on a national level.

Down the road, you can start to relax the preemption (theoretically) and let the market forces keep unwise state regulation in check.

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