Every day the possibility of driverless cars circulating freely on our streets is closer to being a reality thanks to the research and continuous tests from automakers all over the world.
First and foremost, we must understand the difference between driverless and autonomous cars and the levels in between. HERE, the Open Location Platform recently published a blog post about these differences. For the sake of this blog post, we will be talking about driverless cars or those that do not require a human present at all.
The biggest concern with driverless cars is, of course, safety. Are we really safe on the road with a computer making all sorts of judgement calls for us? A second concern with driverless cars is the future of parking.
How will driverless cars change parking?
Some argue that driverless cars will completely destroy the parking industry. The belief is based on the idea that people will either send the cars back home (to be parked) or offer them as a type of taxi service. While this sounds reasonable, there are several overlooked aspects such as costs in fuel from having your car go back and forth (and the inevitable rise in gas prices), and the permits and tax-related procedures required to offer your driverless car as a taxi or shared-car service.
While we cannot be sure the degree of impact driverless cars will have on parking as we now know it, the truth is that the parking industry has been evolving and will continue evolving. We have come a long way from the first parking meter in Oklahoma in 1935. Parking meters have become much more advanced, parking guidance systems have truly perfected the art of real-time information, e-vehicles are pushing parking operators to offer more services and conveniences, and the internet of things has opened the possibility for a lot more services and technologies than we know.
Will driverless cars change parking? Of course!
