The end state for driverless cars is most likely not individual ownership. Large companies will probably own fleets of cars available for hail. In this world, the fleet owners would probably develop a rigorous process to cost effectively fight traffic tickets.

Even if local governments tried to increase the complexity of traffic laws, the fleet owners would increase spending on fighting tickets; this would result in an arms race which would be costly for the local government. It's much easier to extract rent from the little guys.

The worry I have is of increased enforcement of local non-traffic laws to make up revenue.

I'd expect it would be cheaper in the long run for those large companies to influence laws to move ticket liability over to their customers rather than take on the expense of fighting traffic tickets themselves.

Possibly, but that's assuming no aspect of consumer choice in the survival of ride hailing systems. If customers had to worry about tickets, they would quickly migrate to a competitor which assumed liability.

The same way that competition ensures things like Net Neutrality because consumers vote with their wallets?

Most people don't care about net neutrality. Most people will care about having to pay tickets in self-driving car fleets.

I expect eventually the software won't allow speeding when in autonomous modes. Why would it allow any illegal behavior? Stopping in the middle of the road at a green light? Turning right from the left hand lane? Driving without headlamps on 30 minutes after dusk, etc? These are all really rudimentary things to deal with in programming, simply disallow it. If you want to speed, you're on your own, minimal features like brake assist maybe still work. But making it possible for the car itself to break the law? I don't see it even in the medium term, and yes I'm aware the recent Tesla crash was speeding while Autopilot was on.

I envision a concierge service, with a low monthly fee or high one-time usage fee, for road side legal and technical counsel.

If the car is already driving, why should a a passenger know which rule the car was following at the time an officer said a moving violation occurred.

The concierge could access the car's driving records on the fly and provide specific reference to traffic laws at that specific jurisdiction. The officer and the concierge could hash out the entire interaction roadside and it could recorded.

Meanwhile, the passenger/"driver" would be sitting there mouth shut, hands on wheel, and hopefully not attracting any attention beyond the moving violation.

>local governments will increase the number and complexity of traffic laws until revenue is back to the expected level

creating a competitive advantage for least ticketed cars.

why wouldnt google just constantly update the software to comply with all applicable laws at all times? or Ford or Tesla

certainly Uber would have an interest in software that would follow all applicable laws, given the impression your robot driver getting pulled over would give to a passenger.