It’s going to be interesting watching how local police departments and municipalities handle the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. In my town (a subu

It’s going to be interesting watching how local police departments and municipalities handle the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. In my town (a suburban town with a low crime rate), the police spend the majority of their time enforcing traffic laws. The municipal courthouse is always filled with people, and if I had to guess, I’d say that 80% of the people are there as a result of a traffic violation, while the other 20% are there for drug offenses/other. It seems like autonomous cars would lead to a drop in traffic offenses and thus revenue. Even if only a tiny portion of the town’s revenue actually comes from traffic violations (when compared to local property tax), there would probably be a lot more idle time for police. I suspect that they will first start to raise our property taxes to compensate for the lost revenue, but I would think that the long term effect would be a reduction of municipal workers/police. Of course, this doesn’t apply to other areas like Philadelphia, where police spend only a small percentage of their time enforcing traffic laws.