Posted on 02/21/2015 9:20:09 PM PST by Slings and Arrows
Dear Cecil:
I've been waiting for autonomous cars to become a reality. But I’m wondering how much revenue will be lost when there are no more speeding tickets, traffic violations, parking violations, or probably quite a few other kinds of fines that I haven't even considered. How much money will state and local governments lose when traffic tickets become a thing of the past?
Cecil replies:
What I’m wondering is why you’re even thinking about this. Driverless cars may well reshape the urban world — for one thing, autonomous car-sharing could wipe out taxis, limos, and Ubers in a single swat — and you’re focusing on parking tickets. Could you possibly have picked a more boring aspect of this development to analyze? But since you asked, yes: this particularly irritating form of revenue extraction would be mostly eliminated in the event cars became autonomous.
As it stands, issuing tickets is something governments do a lot of. New York City gave out more than a million in 2012. Roughly 23 percent were for tinted windows or seat belt violations (conjuring a rather unsavory image of what New Yorkers are doing in their cars), but the rest were for infractions that wouldn’t’t exist if cars were automated: speeding, phone use while driving, etc. Financially, this is an incredible boon for states and municipalities — the NYPD’s recent hissy-fit strike against Mayor de Blasio cost the city $10 million a week in parking-ticket money. It’s hard to find an ironclad nationwide total for ticket-fine revenue, but (for example) Virginia raked in roughly $97 million on speeding tickets in 2010; scale that up to a population of 320 million and you get a national figure of about $3.7 billion. If autonomous cars make that sum just go away, budget committees are likely to notice.
Google, the apparent front runner in the race to driverless cars, claims their increased efficiency (in part because they can travel in a tightly spaced convoy, reducing drag) will ultimately cut commuting waste by 90 percent. Forbes works the annual savings out as 1.9 billion gallons of gas and 4.8 billion commuting hours, for a total value of $101 billion. I’m not sure I completely buy the details where Google is concerned — two of the last five times I trusted Google Maps I spent a lot longer in Indiana than I’d intended — but undoubtedly the government would lose some money here too. The current federal tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents a gallon, and the average state tax is 23.5 cents a gallon, so 1.9 billion gallons saved means a $350 million annual loss in federal tax revenue and a loss of $447 million for the states.
On the other hand, the total yearly economic cost of all U.S. motor vehicle accidents dwarfs both these figures — in 2010 it was $277 billion. Driverless cars would probably have the occasional accident as well, but the most dangerous factors could be eliminated — crucially, drunk driving. Of the roughly 33,000 traffic fatalities each year in the U.S., about 10,000 result from alcohol impairment. On a pure dollars-and-cents level, that’s a total loss of something like $19 billion in future earnings that the government won’t get to collect taxes on.
Additionally, the government savings on public transportation would be huge. The Chicago Transit Authority system gets about $700 million in annual public subsidies; much of this could be eliminated if bus service, which runs up major labor costs, were replaced by privately operated fleets of driverless minivans. Other pluses on the balance sheet: the disabled and elderly would have greater taxable earnings potential because transportation would be easier, and fewer Medicaid and Medicare dollars would be spent on those involved in car accidents.
The journey from a Google engineer’s wet dream to reality is a long one, of course, and we’ve still got a ways to go before any of these considerations becomes relevant. Some don’t think we’ll ever get there: Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, is working on a driverless car too, but he doesn’t think the human element can be totally eliminated — his version would be more of an autopilot feature. Google’s autonomous car has covered 700,000 miles without incident in and around the Bay Area, but the programmers have fed it tons of data specific to local roads — it wouldn’t work if you dropped it in the middle of Tokyo. Google has preempted one obvious objection by saying it should be liable for any tickets its cars incur, but plenty of unresolved questions remain: How will the car choose in a no-win situation — say, when it has to hit either a jaywalker or another car? Is there a cheat code to get the car to drive faster? Or can you trick the software into speeding by telling it your wife's in labor?
But if you’re asking whether driverless cars are, on balance, actually worth pursuing, the answer is: duh. It’ll surely take a while for it all to play out, but if this thing winds up being half the big deal it could be, the change in traffic-ticket revenue is going to look like a rounding error.
It has never been hard for governments to justify more taxes.
They are not “driverless” or “self-driving” cars.
They are government-driven cars.
You will be driven where the government says you may go. And everywhere you go, the government will be watching.
“.......But I’m wondering how much revenue will be lost when there are no more speeding tickets, traffic violations, parking violations, or probably quite a few other kinds of fines that I haven’t even considered. How much money will state and local governments lose when traffic tickets become a thing of the past?”
Not to worry as dumbass America will vote in Democrats again, and they will restore taxation to maintain their BIG government.
Until someone reverse-engineers them...and breaks the grip of government control....one can only hope.
This will be utter chaos....and that’s before the hackers and insurance companies get involved.
Maybe, maybe not. It’s not hard to believe that, say, Texas and California will approach the issue in very different manners.
I think that’s true of any new technology.
The US and the states can hike up gasoline taxes, but the cities are going to be out of luck. What they'll probably do is beg for money from the state/US in exchange for being told how to spend their money.
In California local governments won't even be able to raise property taxes due to Prop 13. This will likely lead to individual cities being just extensions of the state bureaucracy.
Shortsighted conservatives will go "Yay! even though those greedy bastards at City Hall are losing money from tickets they won't be able to raise my property taxes!" What will happen instead is that state taxes will be raised, some of the money funneled to the cities, and the liberals at the state level calling the shots even in the most Republican parts of the state.
I hope everyone is OK with little Johnnie and Julie being taught the joys of gay sex and making sure that all public restrooms are tranny-accessible.
The states will be made to heel or risk loss of federal funds.
The most obvious excuse: taxes to upgrade and maintain the road signage to be used by automated cars. This may include new OCR-optimized signs, and new markings, and new radio transmitters to guide and control the traffic. Some of the collected monies may be even spent on that.
So, will taxi companies still need taxi drivers?
If you hail a self driving cab and swipe your credit card why would there be a need for a driver? What will the guys making a living by driving a cab do? In some cities that could be a significant issue
The same thing that buggy-whip manufacturers did when the automobile was invented.
I hope driverless cars don’t happen until I’m long gone. If I cannot tromp down on 300-400+ HP and hear and feel the response, while taking off from a stop or winding down a mountain road, a big piece of life’s enjoyment will be gone.
What about auto insurance companies? No more claims.
I think these cars are going to be death traps
With apologies to Tom Waits.
Driverless cars are so DOA. Just think of it, someone loads a car up with explosives and sends it across town. I do not think we need this future.
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