California legislators are on an amendment and enactment mode, targeting principally the state's various driving laws.

Among the measures under consideration are a prohibition on drivers carrying live animals on their laps while behind the wheel. Another proposal seeks to ban truants and high school dropouts from driving, while one bill urges a study on the danger silent electric cars hold for blind pedestrians.

Aside from those, there are bills that would ban mobile phone and laptop use while driving and prohibiting smoking if minors are inside the same vehicle.

The slew of legislation prompted Dick Messer, director of the Petersen Automotive Museum, to complain to the Los Angeles Times, "It's just nuts, the stuff legislators come up with instead of dealing with the real problems facing the state: crime, the economy, the... budget deficit."

Messer related the rash of driving-related bills to a growing global drive to curb motoring and encourage commuting among residents. "They want to force you into public transportation... The problem is, we don't have any," Messer said.

Assemblyman Bob Huff tied the rise in car-related bills to the large numbers of vehicles on the road, placed at 3.5 million automobiles registered in the state.

Even car owners who use recycled vegetable oil for fuel are not spared from state regulations, which border on the ridiculous. Dave Eck, a mechanic from Half Moon Bay, was summoned by Sacramento officials and made to pay a tax for each gallon of used vegetable oil he had put into his vehicle. Eck was also required to secure a diesel fuel supplier's license from California's Meat and Poultry Inspection Branch.

Similarly, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not spared the 18-cent-a-gallon road tax for on used kitchen oil that his Hummer uses.

Josh Tickell, an advocate of cleaner fuels and a filmmaker, took the state to task for its obscure driving laws. "It is ridiculous that we live in what is presumed to be one of the greenest states in the nation, yet we have the most antiquated laws to deal with green energy," Tickell told the San Francisco Chronicle.