And my state, for one, will have to find another source of revenue. It's politically impossible to raise taxes, or even keep taxes at the same level, in Washington.
I would argue that it is unethical to have revenue tied to police actions. It gives the state incentive to criminalize more and more behaviors, and it encourages selective enforcement (if every speeder were pulled over consistently, there would be no speeding, but that wouldn't be profitable for the state). It also muddies the mission statement for police; "protect and serve...and randomly punish otherwise law-abiding citizens" just doesn't have a nice ring to it.
But, I'm not a fan of the punitive nature of our criminal justice system in general (don't get me started on how many Americans are in prison)...so I may be in the minority in taking this view. And, whether people agree with me or not, actually making the changes in revenue structure required to completely eliminate traffic tickets as a source of revenue for municipalities will be a challenge. Governments are not good at reducing their need for money, so it's likely that most will have to squeeze the money out of some other source, such as higher taxes.
> I would argue that it is unethical to have revenue tied to police actions.
Oh yeah, I agree. But when the voting populace effectively agrees they'd rather take a chance on not being pulled over for speeding rather than approve an income tax for people making over $250,000 a year...well, you reap what you sow.
I suppose that new use taxes will be created for driverless cars. Especially driverless and eventually passenger-free commercial vehicles. The state can take a share from the resulting productivity increase.
As a thought experiment, imagine that Walmart is given the opportunity to buy more expensive driverless long haul trucks, that are still much cheaper to operate because no driver is needed. Walmart would be willing to pay a use tax for each mile driven as long as the total business case made sense for the life of the new vehicles.
I hope new taxes don't happen. That would set back the move to driverless cars...every year we don't make the switch is a year in which tens of thousands of people die in car accidents that didn't have to happen. I suspect this is one of those areas where we're only thinking of the negative consequences, and not the positives.
What if you no longer need highway patrol officers to enforce speed limits and traffic laws? Or maybe you need a tenth as many on the road?
What if the number of times emergency responders are needed dropped precipitously because of fewer accidents? Emergency room visits are the only socialized medicine in the US (and horribly inefficient socialized medicine at that), so reducing them will have a huge impact on road-related expenditures borne by all of us.
What if we can begin to phase out signage and signals because the cars know where we're going and know when to stop and start? It will be decades before all cars are self-driving, but roads and lanes could be designated self-driving only, and those lanes could be free of extraneous signals and signs.
What if we can reduce number of miles traveled by optimizing routes, thus reducing damage to roads (subtly, but for big trucks, the differences could add up faster)?
Taxing self-driving vehicles more would be an impediment to a great good, so I hope that doesn't happen.
