The California DMV announced Monday autonomous vehicles without safety drivers will be allowed to test on public roads as soon as April – are you ready to run into them on the streets? We also debate a new bill that would require yearly inspections of all home schools; Angelenos, how has the city’s worsening traffic changed your life?; and more.
Dude, where’s my car’s driver? New DMV rules on driverless cars raise the question: How would you react to a car with no driver?
Picture this: you pull up to a stoplight and look over at the driver in the car next to you, only to discover that there isn’t one.
How would you react? What would you think?
New rules on autonomous vehicle operations that the California DMV released on Monday get rid of the requirement that a human be in the driver’s seat while a driverless car is operating on the road. The new rule, which will go into effect on April 2, is a big step forward in the deployment and normalization of autonomous vehicles on the road.
What's your take on the DMV's new rules? How do you think you'd react to seeing a car on the road without a driver? What concerns do you have about there not being a driver in the driver's seat, even if there is still someone in the car to take over if necessary?
Guests:
Alex Davies, associate editor for transportation at WIRED Magazine; he tweets
Ashley Z. Hand, co-founder of CityFi, a company that focuses on the integration of technology in the urban environment; formerly served as the transportation technology strategist for the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation, and developed public policy for shared mobility, automated vehicles and other technologies; she tweets
How to manage your kid’s video game habits
Gaming devices seem to have become an everyday part of life.
But the conversation shifted last week when Facebook pulled a violent virtual reality game from its booth at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.
Criticism escalated on social media over the violent nature of a game after a video of CPAC attendees playing “Bullet Train” was posted on Twitter. Facebook’s vice president of virtual reality, Hugo Barra, later apologized and pulled the game.
The increased public condemnation makes having a conversation with your children about their online gaming world more pressing.
We discuss how should parents talk to their kids about their gaming habits.
As a parent, is there a way where you can handle your child’s game play habits positively? How closely should you monitor your kid? And are you concerned whether video games are affecting your children negatively?
Call us at 866-893-5722.
Guests:
Jason Schreier, news editor at Kotaku, a site devoted to gaming; author of “Blood, Sweat and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made” (Harper Paperbacks, 2017)
Caroline Knorr, senior parenting editor at Common Sense Media, a nonprofit dedicated to help parents and kids negotiate tech and media
In light of the Turpin child abuse case, should CA have stricter homeschool regulations?
A little more than a month after thirteen Turpin siblings were found locked up in their home in Perris, California, Assemblyman Jose Medina (D-Riverside) is proposing stricter regulations for the homeschool system that some say facilitated an environment of abuse in the Turpin home.
David Turpin had registered their home as a private school with the state Department of Education in 2010, re-submitting the form, known as a private school affidavit, every year. Under existing California law, there is no additional oversight – no home visits or assessment of academic performance – which has led for calls for reform.
Cue Medina’s Assembly Bill 2756, which would mandate that city and county fire departments do yearly inspections of all home schools.
Critics say the legislation unnecessarily targets home-school families in light of a case that had more to do with abuse than the homeschool system, and that home inspections are a breach of their Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Reform advocates, on the other hand, say the bill doesn’t go far enough.
If you were homeschooled or run a homeschool, we want to hear from you. Does this bill create much needed infrastructure for oversight? Or is it a violation of a homeschool family’s privacy? If you do want more oversight, what kind of regulations would be effective, if any?
Call us at 866-893-5722.
Guests:
Pam Dowling, president of the California Homeschool Network, nonprofit that aims to support homeschoolers and ensure that homeschooling remains a legal option
Hännah Ettinger, a homeschool alumni advocate with the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nonprofit that aims to reform policy around homeschooling to protect children
Angelenos, how has the city’s worsening traffic changed your life?
Angelenos love to talk about the weather and traffic - despite the unchanging nature of both things.
We know that the weather is most likely than not going to be good, and traffic is most likely than not going to be horrible. Still, we are obsessed.
As part of the California Dream project, a collaboration between KPCC and newsrooms across the state, our transportation reporter Meghan McCarty Carino will be looking at mobility issues and how they relate to the changing idea of the California Dream.
For this segment, AirTalk wants to hear your memories from the golden age of driving in California -- a time supposedly before bumper-to-bumper traffic, where you can get from one part of town to another with little frustration. Do you remember when the freeways were new and freely flowing (or at least more so than they are today)? What was it like to live and drive around LA during that time? How have you seen things change?
In addition, how has mounting congestion changed the way you live your life in Southern California – from decisions about which jobs you take or who you have relationships with, to how often you visit the beach or go out to dinner out of your neighborhood? Has congestion changed the way you conceive of and interact with the city and shrunken it down to a smaller sphere? How does that influence what you expect of your immediate neighborhood and the amenities it offers?
Call us at 866.893.5722 to let us know.
Guest:
Meghan McCarty Carino, KPCC reporter covering commuting and mobility issues; she’s working on a series of stories for California Dream project, a reporting partnership with newsrooms across California including KPCC, KQED, KPBS, Capital Public Radio and CalMatters