Self-driving cars & parking - will there be new laws?

SebastianR said:

As a consequence, we may see a whole lot of new challenges: E.g. in NYC parking is prohibitively expensive. I could see people being dropped by their Model S, then the car starts to cruise until the car is called back to the front door. Imagine what this would do to traffic.

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It's going to be decades or even longer before "self driving cars" could navigate city driving, pedestrians, bikes, couriers, emergency vehicles, sirens, lights, signs, and traffic, if ever. Right now, "self driving cars" can do very specific things in very controlled environments... like lane keeping on the highway, or adaptive cruise control, or doing a simple "pass" maneuver -- which STILL requires the driver to make sure there isn't a car closing fast in the left lane -- no car sensors are that good yet.

I personally don't think we'll need to worry about "self driving cars" cruising around NYC waiting for their owners in my lifetime.

Or as I've posted before, sooner *if every car on the road* is automated, and you 100% remove the human element.

People "catching rides" with someone else's self driving car.

There will have to be new laws for sure. And I'm sure some countries will plain make it illegal at first.

There is a huge positive potential. A lot of traffic jams are caused by human behavior which could be avoided if all cars would be automated and communicate with each other. Traffic in general would be much better if all cars would communicate.
In terms of safety and accidents, people always assume an automated car would have to be perfect. That's nonsense. An automated car just has to be as good or better in terms of safety as the average driver. That would already be a big step forward. Unfortunately it will be hard to convince people. Just look at EVs. there is no doubt they are better for the environment. They are not perfectly clean, of course. But that's what the critics use to argue against it. They say, 'look the EVs still produce CO2'. Self driving cars will suffer the same criticism. They won't be perfect, there will be accidents and people will use that to show how unsafe it is. The media and average people like to look at single incidents that are dramatic and draw conclusions from that.