Yes, self-driving cars will get towed.
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One of the worst feelings when walking out to your parked car entails seeing a slip of paper and an ominous envelope sitting on the windshield and tucked under the wiper blade. You know in your heart of hearts that it must be a parking ticket.
If you aren’t sure why you are the bearer of a parking ticket, you might look around frantically, trying to figure out whether you have parked in a no-parking zone, or perhaps parked longer than allowed or parked your car askew, and so on. On the other hand, if you knew beforehand that you had parked illegally and were taking a chance, lo and behold the hands of fate decided it was your time to come up on the foul side of the odds and get a parking citation. Probably best to not try next buying a lottery ticket given that instance of bad luck.
You might be wondering, what could be worse than seeing that gosh-darned parking ticket flapping around on your car windshield?
Well, suppose you came out to your parked car and it wasn’t there anymore.
Gone. History. No longer where you parked it.
That will get you into a panic, for sure.
It could be that your car was stolen. That usually is the first thought that might pop into your head, though if you are unsure of where you had parked, to begin with, then you might be having anxious thoughts about where in fact you actually parked your car.
Assuming that you truly know that you parked where you parked and that your car is no longer present, and if you didn’t overtly park in a spot that you knew was illegal to park in, it seems like a reasonable assumption that your car was purloined by some dastardly thieves. Meanwhile, if you were playing fancy and loose, opting to park in a dicey spot, realizing now that your car was gone would be that same feeling as your poker chips being all in at a poker game and getting beat by a surprise royal flush. Yes, you knew that the cards could turn out that way, and likewise, you knew there was a chance your car might get towed, but, hey, those just seemed at the time like wayward likelihoods.
According to various analyses of cars that got towed by the authorities, the most common top reasons for getting such an unrequested or involuntary tow are:
· Unpaid parking tickets
· Expired car registration
· Illegally parked
Notice that I mentioned that these are instances of involuntary tow. Besides getting towed without your explicit request, there are plenty of times that people purposely seek to have their cars towed. Perhaps your car breaks down on the highway and it cannot be driven due to a severe mechanical problem. In that case, you might call a towing service to come and get your vehicle. This might be described as a voluntary tow, which is somewhat an irritating way to depict the situation since you weren’t especially hopeful of having your car breakdown and then getting it towed.
The towing industry in the United States is relatively sizable, amounting to about $7 billion or more in revenue each year. This includes towing for passenger cars and all other types of vehicles, both light ones, and heavy ones. In addition to towing, those revenues encompass facets such as bringing petrol to your car, doing a battery charge-up on the scene, and other roadway services.
For the towing that involves nabbing cars that are considered lawbreaking, such as when illegally parked or when the owner is rated as a scofflaw by having too many outstanding tickets, those tows are relatively significant moneymakers for local governments. To clarify, it is not necessarily the case that the authorities are prompting to generate the income, and instead, they are merely attempting to ensure that the laws are being properly obeyed. You might complain about your car getting involuntarily towed, but presumably, there is some legal basis for the act (and if not, this can be fought in court, albeit not something any of us relishes having to try and battle).
In any case, over the years, many local governments have become accustomed to a predictable amount of revenue based on the involuntary towing of cars. The anticipated funds are cooked into the budget of the local government and are allocated to a variety of governmental services. In brief, if there is a shortfall in the towing related revenues, this can lead to cuts in other government services that otherwise have nothing whatsoever to do with people’s cars.
Of course, critics wonder whether local governments might become overzealous in pursuing those involuntary tows. The logic seems straightforward. If the local government has become dependent upon that line of revenue, it seems they are incentivized to pursue and expand the possibilities of deriving that income. Some assert that a vicious cycle arises of the local government ratcheting up the range and extent of reasons to tow, not for safety purposes but instead for the singular goal of raising monies to support government programs.
There is another angle of attack about involuntary towing. Some express concern for “poverty tows” that entail towing of cars that ultimately are denying the car owner access to their car, which can lead to loss of access to a job, or reduces access to education, shelter, medical care, etc. Thus, there are pressures applied to local governments to be more mindful about doing tows and consider the full semblance of ramifications.
Shifting gears, ponder what the future might consist of.
Here’s an intriguing question: Will the advent of AI-based true self-driving cars obviate the need for car towing and thus there will no longer be any towing activities?
Let’s unpack the matter and see.
Understanding The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars
As a clarification, true self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.
These driverless vehicles are considered a Level 4 and Level 5 (see my explanation at this link here), while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).
There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out, see my indication at this link here).
Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).
For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public needs to be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that despite those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.
You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.
Self-Driving Cars And Going In Reverse
For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.
All occupants will be passengers.
The AI is doing the driving.
Some pundits have predicted that there will never be a need to tow a self-driving car.
Sorry, but that’s a fantasy land mirage.
The most frequent basis for claiming that self-driving cars won’t ever be towed is that they will presumably never park illegally. The AI will be programmed to always park legally. Thus, in theory, there will never be any justification to tow a self-driving car.
First, we can immediately shoot down such a viewpoint by pointing out that there is the involuntary tow versus the voluntary tow. Both of those conditions need to be taken into account. We can start with the voluntary tow since it is the easiest to quickly illustrate.
A self-driving car is driving on a highway. All of a sudden, a mechanical problem occurs inside the car, perhaps in the engine or maybe in the transmission of the vehicle (or, whatever). The AI is supposed to be programmed to cope with such situations and will attempt to pull the car over to a safe spot, if possible. In the parlance of the self-driving car realm, this is considered an act involving the Dynamic Driving Task (DDT) for which after an occurrence of performance-relevant system failure, such as a catastrophic mechanical failure, there is a need to have the car repositioned into a minimal risk condition, perhaps pulling over to the side of the road or taking the next available exit from the highway and then coming to a halt.
Suppose the AI chooses to park on the side of the highway since the self-driving car is in dire straits and cannot otherwise continue on a driving journey. There is now a dead car, as it were, sitting on the edge of the highway. One way or another, the odds are that it will end up being towed.
In theory, the AI will have the capability of contacting the owner to indicate that the car is in an emergency state and has been pulled over. In addition to informing the owner, the AI is likely to have a communications capability to contact an emergency road service, whether one contracted by the owner of the self-driving car or perhaps something more on-the-fly.
Okay, so that’s how a voluntary tow will happen to a self-driving car.
Those that reject this possibility are apt to suggest that self-driving cars will never breakdown. This is pure nonsense and they need to get themselves out of that Utopian world they are dreaming of. There is absolutely going to be self-driving cars that have mechanical problems and breakdown. A car is still a car, including self-driving cars.
The usual retort is that if that’s the case, why don’t we see self-driving cars parked on the side of roads today. This is easily answered. Today’s self-driving cars are pampered beyond belief, perhaps more so than race cars. For the self-driving cars being tried out on the public roadways, they are nightly taken to a special depot whereby they are tuned-up and ready for the next day of trial runs. Furthermore, these are mainly new cars, ones with very few miles and thus less prone to having mechanical failures.
Upon the widespread advent of self-driving cars, it is unfathomable to expect that those self-driving cars are going to get that same white-glove treatment. This is just overly expensive and unlikely to take place. Also, over time, the self-driving cars will be racking up miles, lots of miles, since the owners will want to earn every dollar possible, and the only way to do so will be to keep those self-driving cars moving and serving primarily as ride-sharing vehicles.
I have predicted that the self-driving car repairs marketplace will be booming, see the link here, though keep in mind that will occur many years from now and you would be especially gutsy to already begin gearing up for that faraway future. Nonetheless, assuming that self-driving cars become as popular as hotcakes, there will be zillions of them, and zillions of hours of repairs and maintenance will be required.
The overarching point is that self-driving cars will most certainly be towed, at least concerning the voluntary towing acts.
Does this imply that self-driving cars will avert any involuntary towing?
Nope.
Return to the scenario about the self-driving car that has gone to a halt on the side of the highway. If the AI is unable to make contact with the owner or some pre-determined towing service, an authority that comes upon the stalled vehicle will potentially take action if they see the self-driving car sitting there, endangering traffic.
Sure, the authority might try to contact the owner, but that might not work, or if the owner seems hesitant about taking rapid action, the authority might decide it is safest to have the self-driving car towed right away. Best to get the self-driving car off the highway and eliminate any chances of other cars somehow getting entangled with the self-driving car.
Voila, the involuntary tow.
The usual retort to this point is that if all other cars on the highway are self-driving cars, then the one that is sitting and stalled at the side of the highway will merely use V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) electronic communications to forewarn all of the upcoming self-driving cars. The traffic will electronically be clued that there is a stalled vehicle and therefore move over or otherwise avoid hitting the motionless self-driving car. In that sense, there is no need to carry out an involuntary tow and the self-driving car can sit there until the cows come home, if necessary.
Well, that introduces several problems that need to be pointed out. One is that the highways and roads are not going to be exclusively used by self-driving cars, at least not for any foreseeable near-term future. We are likely to have self-driving cars and human-driven cars mixing together on our roadways for many years, likely many decades. There are about 250 million conventional cars today on the roads and they are not going to magically disappear or be replaced overnight. Furthermore, some drivers insist you will take away their driving privileges by prying their dead cold hands from their steering wheel.
Another problem with the assertion that the self-driving car can just sit there is that you are assuming the V2V is viable and still working. It could be that the mechanical issues of the self-driving car have somehow corrupted the V2V capability, in which case the self-driving car is not able to forewarn other vehicles.
And so on.
All told, self-driving cars are going to be towed, either by voluntary means or by involuntary means.
The Involuntary Towing Of Self-Driving Cars
The most obvious example and least argumentative about involuntary towing of self-driving cars is the breakdown use case (though some do argue it, so I clearly said least argumentative and did not claim it was non-argumentative).
Recall that earlier that I had cited three primary ways that an involuntary tow of a car seems to most frequently be inspired, namely due to outstanding parking tickets, or expired car registration, or illegal parking (and, potentially any combination thereof).
You might believe that a self-respecting self-driving car would never fall into any of those three categories, but you would be wrong.
Let’s tackle the expired car registration.
If the method of car registration is similar to how it is done today, there is no ironclad guarantee that a self-driving car will never have an expired tag. This matter of the tag is up to the self-driving car owner. In theory, a self-driving car owner ought to make sure that the self-driving car has a valid tag, but there is nothing axiomatic about this. Whether a fleet owner or an individual owner, they could goof and fail to renew the tag, or possibly renew it and drop the ball by failing to put the tag on the vehicle.
The only seemingly way to ensure that the tag issue never arises would be to put in place widespread electronic car registration. Presumably, the AI of the self-driving car would be programmed to check and make sure it has a valid tag. Also, rather than the tag being a sticker, it might be displayed electronically or communicated electronically, thus any authority desiring the status of the tag can just do an electronic check. All of this is possible, but one wonders if or when this will happen, and if so, will it occur before self-driving cars start to become widespread. As long as the tag aspects are essentially manually based, there is a chance that the self-driving car will end-up with expired tags and possibly get towed.
The outstanding parking tickets involves the same kind of logic as I’ve expressed about the tags, though this takes us to the other claim by some pundits that a self-driving car will never get a parking ticket. Thus, in that viewpoint, there is zero chance of outstanding parking tickets.
Will a self-driving car never get a parking ticket?
The use of the word “never” is pretty awe-inspiring and sets a rather high bar or hurdle. As I have expressed in several of my other articles, self-driving cars are going to end-up driving “illegally” at times, and included in that category is the act of being illegally parked. Those that think the AI will flawlessly ensure that a self-driving car is never parked illegally are envisioning a world of lollipops and candies.
In the real world, there is a substantive chance of self-driving cars getting caught illegally parked, and you can bet that it will happen.
Conclusion
Overall, the amount of involuntary towing of self-driving cars will likely be a lot less than the involuntary towing of conventional human-driven cars. In that case, it means that the revenue dollars for local governments as funded by involuntary tows will drop, potentially precipitously so. There is already hand-wringing about how local governments will deal with the loss of such a notable source of funds.
Well, we aren’t there yet, and it will be many years before this plays out. Perhaps a sufficient heads-up can provide time to prepare and adjust.
I would say more about this topic, but I just noticed that the meter for my parked car is just about to expire, and I need to run outside to make sure that my car doesn’t get towed. Or, maybe I ought to code some AI to take care of that for me.
