Four years ago, the Villages considered a shuttle, but decided it was too costly to have a full-time driver. There is a service called the Villages Medical Auxiliary to take people to the doctor’s office or the supermarket, but there is a shortage of volunteer drivers and people need to make appointments two days in advance. It pushes residents to keep driving when they shouldn’t.

Ask almost anyone at the Villages and he or she can tell you about an accident: the driver who drove into a pond or the person who hit the accelerator instead of the brake and took out the tennis court fence.

“The driverless car would be far less risky than the drivers that we currently have,” said Bill Devincenzi, a former board president of the Villages whose term expired in June.

Another issue that could be solved by driverless cars is a shortage of parking spots. Like many of the Villages’ residents, Nancy Green, 88, is active. She swims three times a week, regularly attends wine-tasting dinners and participates in a weekly bridge game. But after three back operations, she struggles to walk long distances.

For popular events, she sometimes arrives an hour early to secure one of the few handicap spots. If none are available, she turns around and goes home. She said she did not like eating dinner at the clubhouse at 5:30 p.m., but the chances of finding a parking spot at her preferred time of 7 p.m. were “slim and none.”

“From that perspective, I think the self-driving car would be great,” she said.

But what seemed like a done deal hit a roadblock this year. The agreement to offer self-driving car rides in the retirement community almost fell apart when negotiations hit an impasse over insurance. California requires autonomous vehicles to have $5 million of coverage, but the Villages insisted on 50 percent more coverage because it is a private community with more liability risk.