4 ms·
The actual regulation in question is part of CA's state-wide agricultural safety code... (b) All self-propelled equipment shall, when under its own power and in
by alistairSH 1y ago
The actual regulation in question is part of CA's state-wide agricultural safety code...
(b) All self-propelled equipment shall, when under its own power and in motion, have an operator stationed at the vehicular controls.
It's been in place since the 1970s. At the time it was passed, it was probably reasonable to require a human operator at the controls at all times.
The law is just an anachronism that the state legislature should remove/update.
- londons_explore 1y ago> operator stationed at the vehicular controls. I wonder how the law is written? Could you have a set of vehicular controls in Kenya remotely hooked up to control it? And then you only pay kenyan not US labour rates? Can't imagine tractors move fast enough whilst plowing that the extra 67 milliseconds of latency matters.
- alistairSH 1y agoI literally quoted the law... Like I said, it was written in the 1970s, before remote controls and GPSes and AI and things existed.
- aerostable_slug 1y agoCalifornia has some other interesting legacy laws, like the one banning night vision use on weapons. IIRC, in theory a modern thermal imaging rifle sight wouldn't violate the law as written (but I wouldn't want to be the test case).
- pfdietz 1y agoI have to wonder why the regulation was written in the first place. Was there really an outbreak of rogue machinery that necessitated the regulation?