CALIFORNIA’S WAR ON THE DRIVERLESS TRACTOR By Jason Resnick, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
A Rule Written for Another Age A Cal/OSHA regulation rooted in the 1970s requires self-propelled agricultural equipment moving under its own power to have an operator stationed at the controls. The rule made sense when autonomous farm equipment belonged to science fiction and a driverless tractor meant someone had fallen off. Nearly 50 years later, tractors can follow mapped routes, remain within geofenced boundaries, detect people and obstacles and stop automatically. But California still generally requires a human being at the controls whenever employees could enter the area. The tractor has changed. The regulation has not. Sacramento’s Innovation Paradox This might be merely another example of government moving slowly if the consequences were not so serious. California growers face a persistent labor shortage, rising wages, agricultural overtime, increasingly expensive H-2A requirements and fierce competition from foreign producers that operate under very different labor and regulatory standards. Sacramento’s answer to nearly every agricultural problem is that growers must become more efficient, adopt new technology and do more with less. Then, when the technology arrives, the state tells growers to put someone in the driver’s seat. The Elevator Operator Problem History has seen this before. Push-button elevators were commercially viable by the early 20th century, but elevator operators remained common for decades. Municipal codes continued to require attendants, the public distrusted the idea of riding alone and unions negotiated agreements protecting operator positions even in buildings equipped for automatic service. Safety was the stated concern, and early elevators certainly presented real hazards. But as automatic door-reopening sensors, floor-leveling systems, emergency interlocks, communications equipment and braking systems became standard, the safety rationale steadily weakened. The 1945 New York City elevator strike helped expose the absurdity of having an entire city depend on people performing a function that machines could reliably perform themselves. Today, requiring a licensed operator to stand inside every elevator and press the button would seem ridiculous. California is repeating that history in the fields.
Regulate the Risk, Not the Seat The justification, of course, is safety. Tractors and other heavy equipment can cause serious injuries and fatalities. No responsible grower or equipment manufacturer disputes that reality. Autonomous equipment should not receive a free pass, and no one is asking for one. But safety rules should measure whether equipment operates safely. They should not assume that the presence of a human operator is the only way to make it safe. Modern autonomous equipment can incorporate obstacle-detection systems, cameras, radar, geofencing, audible warnings, emergency-stop controls, speed limitations and automatic shutdown features. International standards now address the design and testing of partially automated and autonomous agricultural machinery. The technology can record operating data and document near misses in ways a conventional tractor cannot. A rule that simply requires a person at the controls does not account for any of this. It regulates the seating arrangement rather than the risk. It can also produce the opposite of its intended result. An autonomous tractor can perform repetitive tasks in extreme heat, operate in areas recently treated with crop-protection products and remove employees from rollover and equipment-strike hazards. Requiring a person to remain on or immediately beside the machine may put a worker back into the very environment the technology was designed to avoid. Studying the Future While Blocking the Present Cal/OSHA itself has recognized that the old rule needs attention. After previously opposing petitions to allow autonomous agricultural vehicles, the agency acknowledged in 2024 that it had learned more about the technology and rescinded its general opposition. An advisory committee followed, bringing together regulators, growers, manufacturers, unions, worker advocates and researchers. That was progress. But studying the future is not the same as permitting it. California’s regulatory process can take years. Technology companies do not have years to wait while their capital dries up and their competitors establish themselves elsewhere. Growers cannot make long-term investments in equipment when the legal right to use it depends on a variance, an empty field or the hope that regulators will eventually rewrite a rule adopted before the personal computer.
6 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com October – December 2026
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