You could well be right, but when I imagine this happening, I don't see it as 'it will be everywhere, all at once', but instead, 'it might be governing jurisdiction by governing jurisdiction.' I don't know at what level traffic management is governed in the US - is it at the State level? If so, I could imagine states like California or Nevada, which I understand are litigation friendly to corporations (could be wrong about this), as places where 'automated traffic diversification' (can't wait to see this turn up in a serious article somewhere) could have more legs than elsewhere. Ultimately, it's about the potential value of a new market, versus, as you say, the likely potential cost of exploiting it. In a state willing to pass favourable legislation with enough cars to make it worthwhile, I could see serious thought given to it, if the technology was there to support it. And my last thought is: is there anything about our current use of roads and cars and traffic management that accords us any specific rights to a standard of service beyond, perhaps, safety? A couple of nights ago I spent 10 minutes in a traffic jam caused by roadworks - at no point did it occur to me that I had any legal right that was potentially being compromised. If an ambulance had been caught in that same traffic jam and a patient had died 6 minutes before getting to life support unit in a hospital, who would / could the family sue? Maybe there's already legislation / case law that covers these situations... Or another example - when one of the big events comes to a city - the Olympics, or the G8 or whatever - and roads are shut down and priority routes are isolated away from normal traffic, causing chaos for ordinary residents, we are basically hard-wiring the kind of preferential treatment I'm talking about, and at a MUCH more intrusive level. Imagine a selling point of a company saying, we will seamlessly manage traffic around your special and extranormal events, in return you licence us the right to monetise traffic management at a subscriber level. You're probably right that it will never happen, but I believe some people will be giving it serious thought as the technological potential approaches.
So the legal authority for roads is different than the legal authority for motor vehicles. The legal authority for operating motor vehicles is different than the legal authority for selling motor vehicles. This is why every time you register a car in a state for the first time it has to pass a state-specific safety inspection, but why the standard and mandatory equipment of vehicles is dictated by the NHTSA and DOT. General rule of thumb: the tallest rules govern. So New Mexico, which pretty much requires cars to have a mirror and a horn, has vehicles that are 50-state legal because cars legal for sale in one state must be legal for sale in all states. Does that make sense? An autonomous driving system is vehicular equipment, which means its legality and governance will be covered by the DOT. Note that certain states have passed legislation making operation of autonomous vehicles legal; that's very different than sales. Sales will be governed by the same body that does seat belts, airbags, brakes, etc. So far so good? Adding onto that: the discussion isn't "legality" so much as "contract liability." If you buy a self-driving car that will get you there the fastest way legal, and it suddenly becomes a car that will get you there "the fastest way you can afford", you're going to run afoul of price gouging statutes - after all, you bought one thing, you're getting another, and that's intentional tort. And there's no way to get around it. If Google Carbon and Google Diamond are on the same roads, obeying the same laws, and Google Carbon has to deprecate its service in order for Google Diamond to serve its customers, then Delphi Drive has a sales advantage over both because it's got one universal level of service. Which means Google Diamond has no ability to enforce its deprecation on Delphi Drive, then nobody buys Google Carbon because you're suddenly the only loser that can't get to work on time. Simply offering two tiers also invites congressional inquiry into your methods... and Google don't want that. You're correct: you have no "right" to speedy traffic. However, you absolutely have a "right" to a product you paid for. By the way: Life safety is a non-issue. 911 gets to say "there's an ambulance coming through" and every self-driving car slows down and pulls over before you even hear it. G8? Life safety. Whole 'nuther issue than "my car is faster than yours 'cuz I pay more per month."
There actually was a two tiered system for a brief time in the early 2000s. California had recently passed stricter emissions standards, so all of a sudden the big three had a choice: make different cars for CA or make all their cars cleaner. They chose to temporarily make different cars for sale in CA while suing them in court under the Commerce Clause (because option three, don't sell cars in CA, was a nonstarter due to the gigantic market there). Meanwhile, a bunch of other states signed onto CA's standards, and the problem 'fixed' itself. It was an interesting but very temporal situation in the industry. Everyone knew it was temporary and that's the only way it occurred in the first place. Not that this is very relevant to the discussion at hand; just wanted to share a bit of history that I doubt many people are familiar with.
They had a new regime, the Zero Emission Vehicle program, that took effect in 2003, and applied to all new cars starting in MY 05 that created a huge legal mess in which the EPA and the auto industry jointly sued the state of CA over their standards. In the end, CA prevailed, if I'm not mistaken. (I only know this because I interviewed for a job as an emissions engineer for DaimlerChrysler in late 2005--didn't get it, but still had to study up a bit.) But you're correct that it had nothing to do with safety of the car.
Ah, okay, so it would be materially different, then, from a company being able to deliver a value-to-the-business individualised experience on its incoming telephone network because it owns that network, whereas in the example of cars they don't own the 'network' (i.e., the roads) and therefore can't prejudice the experience of those using the network. Is that at all close to the mark?
Look at it this way: You've got a system of interconnected players. There's "you", "other drivers on the same autonomous network", "other drivers on different autonomous networks", "other drivers not on autonomous networks", "life safety vehicles", "local jurisdiction", "state jurisdiction", "national jurisdiction," etc. The situation you're describing covers "you" and "other drivers on the same autonomous network." There are lots of players that aren't covered. They all have "rights" governed by their social contract and actual contracts through citizenship, licensure, etc. Let's come up with some players: - Adam is Google SelfDrive Carbon (cheap) - Bob is Google SelfDrive Diamond (expensive) - Charlie is Delphi Autocruise (untiered) - Dave is in a '77 Nova - Elliott is a cop - Fred is a long-haul trucker - Google is a company too smart to get themselves in this mess, but bear with me. Adam is going to work. Bob is also going to work, but Bob has the added advantage of fucking Adam over whenever he feels like it. This is likely to create seething resentment of Google by Adam, but we'll disregard that for a moment. So Bob is bombing down the interstate and Google tells Adam's car to pull over out of Bob's way. Adam is going to cut in front of Charlie, if he can. Charlie's car has accident avoidance. But is Google going to let Adam's car drive aggressively enough to risk an incident? If it can be proved that they did, Google can be sued by Delphi. Charlie moves over and gets in front of Dave. Dave isn't paying much attention and catches it late - he rear-ends Charlie. Delphi can still sue Google, but now Dave could sue both Google and Delphi. Fred was asleep - his truck is driving itself. It slams on the brakes and performs a precision panic maneuver to end up on the margin so that Charlie and Dave aren't street meat. Fred can likely be fired for being asleep. Fred's trucking company can sue Google and Delphi, and maybe Fred can sue his trucking company. Elliott watches this pigfuck of an operation and files a report. The highway patrol subpoenas Google's data and discovers that none of this shit would happen if Google wasn't favoring Bob. Meanwhile Bob has caused a pile-up simply for owning Google Diamond, which makes him a likely target of litigation, which adds to the existing caselaw against Google Diamond so his insurance rates go up. Meanwhile, he's not actually any faster to work since the only person he has power over in this entire pigfuck is Adam. This all came about because Google chose to not drive the best they could in two separate instances solely so they could make a buck. There will be plenty of curious litigation associated with autonomous vehicles anyway - the costs/benefits analysis of Google sticking their neck out on this one just doesn't pan out. Neither will it pan out for anyone else - the acquisition cost for a network of the scale necessary is staggeringly high and you don't jeopardize its certification for penny-ante shit like this. And that's really the bottom line - because it's a network, rather than an individual car system, everyone has to be on the same page. Scribble on that page and it's scribbled for everyone. Remember how Audi had to virtually retreat from the US market because mmmmmmmmmaybe their gas pedals were getting stuck? This is like that, only voluntary. It won't happen. Not in any country on the planet. Autonomous networks will drive to the best of their legal abilities, period.
I wonder if this would ever be feasible in other markets? Japan, China, Europe, Russia etc. Edit: removed Hong Kong due to inclusion of China, and added Russia just because.