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.