Yes, which is the scary part. Google's PR seems to keep insinuating we might be able to ride in one as early as next year, or that the law is somehow a burden to the progress of this technology.

There's already people advocating that California's laws requiring self-driving cars be driven by licensed drivers are potentially discriminatory, and Google's already complaining that their statistically-more-dangerous-than-people drivers currently require licensed drivers on the road: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-28/self-drivi...

Given where we're at, it's insane to consider California's laws anything but reasonable. We're a long way off from the necessary confidence to allow a driverless car to run without human intervention. But Google's constant indications that this law and others like it are a problem insinuates a much higher confidence in their technology than any reasonable person should have.

Frequently in these sorts of discussions I've often seen people talking about 2018 or 2019 as likely consumer release dates, which seems to be the real incredible claim needing defense.