On September 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1246. It spells out what companies running driverless vehicles owe the police officers, firefighters, and dispatchers who deal with those vehicles when something goes wrong. Most of its requirements apply by July 1, 2028.
A driverless commercial vehicle has no one inside to take instructions at a scene. The law fills that gap with a set of duties for the companies that operate them.
The company must dispatch a local incident technician immediately after a crash or incident that leaves a vehicle immobilized, blocks traffic or emergency access, creates a roadway hazard, or needs help on site. It must also dispatch one when an emergency response official or a 911 dispatch center asks. By July 1, 2028, the Department of Motor Vehicles must set standards for how quickly technicians should arrive.
When a fleetwide emergency or system failure hits, the company must immediately tell affected local jurisdictions, including emergency dispatch, where its vehicles are and what state they are in. If vehicles can’t be recovered remotely, technicians go to them.
For commercial vehicles with no manual controls, the company’s remote staff must be able to put the vehicle in neutral, or shut it off and keep it in place. Remote drivers must be located in the United States and hold a valid license of the right class for California. Companies must keep enough communications capacity to handle their maximum number of simultaneous remote sessions.
Companies must also record technician response times, emergencies, immobilizations, obstructions, crashes, and requests from officials, and report them to the DMV every quarter. The DMV will publish summary statistics. The state’s peace officer standards commission will set guidelines for the training companies give to first responders, and it will create voluntary training for officers.
Violations are civil, not criminal. A city attorney or county counsel can sue, and the penalties go to the city or county. The penalty is up to $5,000 for each violation of the technician and notification rules. It is up to $10,000 for each commercial vehicle that causes an obstruction lasting more than 30 minutes after an emergency official asks for a technician.
The law treats failure as a normal operating condition and assigns someone to it.
Why this matters beyond robotaxis
Most organizations will never deploy a driverless car. Many will deploy AI systems that can fail in public: a chatbot giving wrong benefits information, a routing tool that sends a crew to the wrong address, a translation service that drops part of a 911 call.
SB 1246 answers a set of questions that belong in any contract for a system like that. When it fails, who shows up? How fast? Who gets told, and through what channel? What gets recorded, and who can see it?
What public safety leaders can do now
- Find out which autonomous vehicle companies operate in your jurisdiction, or plan to, and get their incident contact process in writing.
- Decide with dispatch how an obstruction call will be routed and logged. The state’s quarterly data is only useful if your own records can be checked against it.
- Watch for the DMV’s response-time guidelines. They set the standard you can hold companies to.
- Watch for the commission’s voluntary officer training, and decide who should attend.
- Talk with your city attorney or county counsel now. The law gives them the enforcement role, not the state.
- Ask the same questions of any AI vendor whose system can fail in public: who responds, how fast, who is notified, and what gets reported.
The law doesn’t ask whether the vehicles will fail. It asks who answers when they do.
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