The United States Congress, which has been a pretty partisan institution lately, pushed forward a bill to support self-driving car adoption on a unanimous vote.
This is still a long way from becoming a law — right now it’s just a bill that got reported out of committee — but it’s got momentum.
I have a complicated reaction to this, based on a combination of my knowledge of the industry and my personal politics, but an interesting reaction was from my colleague Andrew, who posted this to our internal Slack channel and said, “It’s real now.”
Andrew’s sense was that for a bill to actually start working its way through Congress, there needs to be an army of lobbyists and interest groups who care enough about it to spend real money pushing it forward.
The fact that the automotive industry cares enough to move these bills forward convinces Andrew that they’re really serious.
Honstely, I was convinced by the billion dollar investments. But either way, it’s real now.
David Silver 