As of July 1, California police finally have a way to hold driverless cars accountable when they break traffic laws, closing a loophole that had left officers staring into empty driver’s seats with no one to ticket. Under Assembly Bill 1777, authored by Assemblymember Phil Ting and backed by a sweeping set of California Department of Motor Vehicles regulations, officers can now issue “notices of noncompliance” to the companies that operate autonomous vehicles, rather than to a human driver who isn’t there. The manufacturer must then report each notice to the DMV. It is the most concrete answer yet to a problem that has embarrassed and frustrated law enforcement across the country: how do you enforce the rules of the road on a car with no one behind the wheel?

The absurdity of the old system was on full display last year in San Bruno, California, where officers pulled over a Waymo for an illegal U-turn only to find no driver to cite. The department joked on social media that its citation books “don’t have a box for ‘robot.’” But other incidents have been far from funny. A Waymo ran a red light in front of an officer in Phoenix. Another failed to stop for a school bus in Atlanta. In January, a Waymo struck a child near a Santa Monica elementary school during morning drop-off, prompting a federal investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And during a blackout in San Francisco before Christmas, stalled Waymo vehicles clogged city streets and blocked first responders.

For police and fire departments, the operational headache went beyond tickets. Officers had no clear way to move a driverless car parked in the middle of an active emergency, and no person to give an order to. The new DMV rules try to fix that. Companies must now respond to first-responder calls within 30 seconds. Local officials can draw a digital “geofence” around a disaster or crime scene, and once that order is sent, the operator is legally required to make the vehicle detour or leave within two minutes. Remote operators, the people who monitor and sometimes steer these cars from afar, must now be licensed and permitted. Companies also have to report far more data on immobilizations, hard-braking events, and collisions.

The business stakes for the autonomous-vehicle industry are real. Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, runs roughly 1,000 driverless vehicles in the San Francisco Bay Area alone and is among the companies most exposed to the new framework. The cars have already piled up about $65,000 in parking tickets, a bill that will grow now that moving violations are on the table. More significant than the fines is the enforcement leverage: the DMV can restrict a company’s fleet size, speed, and operating territory, or suspend and revoke permits outright, if a manufacturer racks up violations or ignores emergency directives. For a business racing to expand city by city, that regulatory power is a direct threat to the growth story investors are counting on.

The companies are pushing back on parts of the plan. In comments on an earlier draft, Waymo objected to publicly disclosing the noncompliance notices it receives, saying it wanted to protect confidential business information. That tension, between public accountability and corporate secrecy, is likely to define the next phase of the fight as regulators in other states watch California for a model. The law also leaves a notable gap: while it spells out how citations are issued, it does not set specific fines or criminal penalties for companies that pile up repeated notices, leaving the ultimate financial consequences unclear.

Public wariness gives the crackdown its political fuel. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 5% of Americans have ever ridden in a driverless car, while 71% said they would feel uncomfortable doing so and just 7% called themselves very comfortable with the idea. Fresh controversies keep the technology in the spotlight. This week, police in San Mateo, California, detained two teenagers after a Waymo disabled itself and alerted authorities to suspected trouble inside, reigniting a separate debate over how much these camera-covered vehicles surveil the people around them.

For now, California has handed police a tool they lacked, and handed the robotaxi industry a new set of costs and constraints to manage. Whether a notice mailed to a corporate office carries the same weight as a ticket handed to a driver is the question the next year of enforcement will answer. As more cities welcome driverless fleets, the pressure to make the machines follow the same rules as everyone else is only going to build.

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