This should be interesting. If I were in a Walmart parking lot facing an empty car and it was trying to take a space, I would probably accelerate at it assuming it would back off, since there's no one who cares. If everyone did this, would it end with some parade of never-parking-Teslas that just drive around the parking lot until their owner gets done shopping? That's not necessarily a bad thing...but it would be a weird new aspect to parking.
Nobody seems to have considered the possibility of actually driverless cars. Would not be remotely legal, but interesting to consider them just aimlessly driving city streets or looking for parking that it will never find.
OK, say you're in Manhattan. Assuming a private car, instead of paying for a garage, should it be acceptable to just leave an automated car driving around, or instead, driving outward until it finds a public space? Would it result in cheaper garages, or some other crazy problem?
In Manhattan this is already happening. Not-so-rich people drive around for an hour looking for "free" or cheap street parking. Rich people pay others to sit in their cars while they are illegally parked.
Having a robot do it instead of a person would be an improvement. Better would be to make the behavior stop regardless of driverlessness.
Problematic questions would be raised about cars that redlined certain city neighborhoods.
There is illegal robbery and legal robbery... once neighborhood redlining became popular, you can guarantee cities would start raising revenue by ticketing self driving cars caught cruising residential zones, entertainment districts, etc. We have plenty of existing laws and case law against "cruising". You can imagine the bug reports already "Your service failed to inform my car that the sportsball team was having a game last night, placing the stadium district under no-cruise law, so I got ticketed, towed, impounded, and had to pay for a taxi home"
This is a very interesting hypothetical from a public policy standpoint. Perhaps the city would find a need to subsidize parking for the sake of pollution, traffic, and energy consumption concerns.
edit: maybe subsidize is the wrong word, but rather that they will incentivize affordable parking and make more available.
Surprised to get downvoted as I was not trying to be snarky.
I've seen the pointless discussions and I probably did not word my previous comment properly to indicate I am still trying to find compelling arguments one way or another.
Also, is there a new kind of 'road rage' where one's automated car is defeated in some way by someone else's automated car? Or, if one is blocked out by superior automation? I'm a bit new to thinking about this, but I'm starting to imagine the confrontations. The bitterness will be amplified and at the same time limited by the fact that cameras are recording everything.
