Potential N.H. laws of geek interest, including autonomous cars

The massive New Hampshire legislature (third-largest elected body in English-speaking world) is gearing up for its 2017 session, and part of that involves lawymakers filing LSRs (legislative service requests), which are sort of placeholders saying that they plan to file an actual bill about the topic. LSRs are intriguing because there’s no text to them yet, just the title, so it’s hard to know exactly what they’ll involve. Many of the titles are nothing more than “Relative to <a subject>” which tells you virtually nothing.

But it’s still fun to scroll through them (here’s the list as of Dec. 7)  and get a sense of what’s likely to come up. I wandered through it and found some items likely to interest GraniteGeek readers:

HB 0501: “relative to showing a ballot” – that sounds like it involves ballot selfies, since “showing” is the legal term in laws that prevented sharing pictures of your own filled-out ballot. Prime sponsor (meaning the lawmaker who filed the LSR) is Rep. Steve Vaillancourt.

HB 0425: “deleting certain immunization requirements for non-communicable diseases” – could be part of the anti-vax movement, or might be something else entirely. Prime sponsor is Rep. Valerie Fraser of New Hampton. She also sponsors HB 0355 “abolishing fluoridation in water”, which says something.

HB 0183: “making daylight savings time permanent” – ah, daylight saving time (the LSR is wrong: “saving” is not plural), a perennial topic of geek-bar debate. Prime sponsor is Keith Murphy of Bedford.

There are a couple of drone bills. One (HB-0070, with many sponsors) would prevent them from being flown over jails, a headache for corrections officials, and another (HB 0102) just says “relative to use of drones” and is from Rep. Neil Kurk, who has filed drone-related legislation for many years, usually involving concerns about them violating privacy.

…. and the geekiest is …

HB 0411: “Relative to autonomous vehicles” filed by Rep. Steven Smith of Charlestown. There have been a couple attempts in past years to create a committee to study this issue and develop recommendations about licensing and regulatory issues to allow self-driving vehicles in New Hampshire, but they have died. I expect this will be another along those same lines.