[estefan]

That's only because of Uber's interpretation. From the FT article:

> California law defines an autonomous vehicle as one that is able to drive “without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator”.

> Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer who leads Uber’s driverless car efforts, said the fleet would be “self-driving” but not “autonomous”, making an unusual semantic distinction.

A pretty tenuous way of avoiding regulations if you ask me.

[Jarwain]

My understanding of the law is that an autonomous vehicle does not require control or monitoring. However, Uber's car has an operator monitoring the car's activity, although not actively controlling the car. Because of this, it is not considered autonomous by California law.