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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
by galago 11y ago
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.
- Caprinicus 11y agoNobody 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.
- galago 11y agoOK, 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?
- hayksaakian 11y agowhat if the cost of having my empty car wander the city is cheaper than paying for parking? will parking costs go down? will there be some laws forbidding this behavior?
- sigmar 11y agoThis 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.
- tyre 11y agoAimless driving would be difficult to regulate. Instead, if you know roughly how long you'll be gone, they could temporarily Lyft while you shop.
- mintplant 11y agoIt seems to me that a completely empty car wandering the city would make a more enticing target for theft.
- sandworm101 11y agoMore than an empty parked car? I'd bet a car doing 80 on the highway is harder to rob than one parked in a lot.
- VLM 11y agoProblematic 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"
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoYou have the car do taxi runs - lyft/uber/whatever - or deliveries until you need it again.
- jzwinck 11y agoIn 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.
- raverbashing 11y agoThis is irritating It's fine to want to pay less, but in the end you might have just parked at a train/subway station far away and taken the train downtown Faster, quicker and probably cheaper
- newman314 11y agoI still have yet to see what driverless cars will do in light of the trolley problem. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
- joosters 11y agoJust search online and you'll find lots of pointless discussion about it.
- newman314 11y agoSurprised 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.
- galago 11y agoAlso, 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.
- sandworm101 11y agoYes. Unless you pay a monthly premium. Then your tesla will always win the fight. The cars of the poor will politely give up their spots. Except my spot. Which will have a tesla-proof orange cone forever protecting it from skynet.
- mikeash 11y agoThe car already has to be lined up with the space to park without the driver in it, and the driver still has to be nearby. Your strategy won't work. A lot of people seem to be commenting on this without understanding how it works.