Via IEVS (the headline's misleading, as the issues apply to all AVs):
Will Tesla Self-Driving Cars Affect Traffic Law Enforcement
http://insideevs.com/tesla-self-driving ... forcement/
How will the advent of self-driving cars affect traffic law enforcement? Florida law firm Denmon & Pearlman has considered the question carefully, and created this infographic to illustrate some of the issues involved.
It’s widely expected that autonomous vehicles will make our roads safer. According to Denmon & Pearlman (a list of sources is provided at the bottom of the infographic), 94% of crashes are caused by human error. Widespread adoption of self-driving cars could reduce both the number of accidents and the rate of fatalities. That means fewer police officers and EMTs working accident scenes, a duty that we’re sure they would be happy to avoid.
Self-driving cars could also mean fewer traffic stops – according to Denmon & Pearlman’s sources, around 800,000 drivers get pulled over every day, and vehicle autonomy could eliminate some 56% of these stops. That would surely be a good thing for all concerned. For law officers, traffic stops are time-consuming and stressful. For drivers, they are embarrassing and potentially expensive. In rare but well-publicized cases, they result in tragedy.
Depending on how you look at it, however, the news isn’t all good. Less need for traffic enforcement will mean fewer jobs for police officers, and fewer traffic tickets will mean less revenue for local governments. D & P estimate that speeding tickets alone represent $6 billion in fines every year. If 1 out of 4 cars is self-driving by 2030, that revenue could shrink by 25%. Will law-abiding citizens have to pay more in taxes to make up the shortfall? . . .
All these issues and more are discussed in "Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead", but there are some good graphics in this article, although they mistakenly left two categories of traffic stop in the 'avoidable' category which would reduce the number of stops by another 2.36%, as neither should apply for fully autonomous vehicles: suspended license and window tint. It may well be that a further 16.05%, for 'registration' would disappear, depending on how much information/control over AVs DMVs have. One scenario would be that a car which isn't registered would be rendered inoperable.
IIRR, "Driverless" mentions that NYC collects $600 million a year in parking fines alone, so the money from this and other fines would have to be found elsewhere once these sorts of violations no longer occur. On the positive side, there'd be less need for parking garages and lots (one of the least lucrative sources of property taxes, allowing the real estate to be used for other uses) and roads could be narrowed, decreasing road construction and maintenance costs; traffic signals would also decrease and maybe go away completely at some future point, etc.