All content categorized with: Articles
Filter
Post List
Vehicle Rental Laws: Road Blocks to Evolving Mobility Models?
The laws and regulations governing mobility are inconsistent and antiquated and should be modernized to encourage innovation as we prepare for an autonomous car future. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) has concluded that Autonomous Vehicles, or Highly Automated Vehicles (“HAVs”) may “prove to be the greatest personal transportation revolution since the popularization of the personal automobile nearly a century ago.” Preparation for a HAV world is underway as the mobility industry evolves and transforms itself at a remarkable pace. New mobility platforms are becoming more convenient, more automated and more data driven—all of which will facilitate the evolution to HAVs. However, that mobility revolution is hindered by an environment of older laws and regulations that are often incompatible with new models and platforms. Although there are a number of different mobility models, this article will focus on carsharing, peer-to-peer platforms, vehicle subscription programs, and rental car businesses (yes, car rental is a mobility platform). All of these mobility models face a host of inconsistent legal, regulatory and liability issues, which create operational challenges that can stifle innovation. For example, incumbent car rental, a mobility platform that has been in place for over 100 years, is regulated by various state and local laws that address everything from driver’s license inspections to use of telematics systems. Although physical inspection of a customer’s driver’s license at the time of rental is commonplace and expected in a traditional, face-to-face transaction, complying with the driver’s license inspection for a free-floating carsharing or other remote access mobility model becomes more problematic. Part B of this article will review current federal and state vehicle rental laws and regulations that may apply to incumbent rental car companies and other mobility models around the country, including federal laws preempting rental company vicarious liability and requiring the grounding of vehicles with open safety recalls, as well as state laws regulating GPS tracking, negligent entrustment, and toll service fees. Part C poses a series of hypotheticals to illustrate the challenges that the existing patchwork of laws creates for the mobility industry. For instance, whether a mobility operator can utilize GPS or telematics to monitor the location of a vehicle is subject to inconsistent state laws (permitted in Texas, but not California, for example). And vehicle subscription programs are currently prohibited in Indiana, but permitted in most other states. Similarly, peer-to-peer car rental programs currently are prohibited in New York, but permitted in most other states. Finally, Part D of the article will offer some suggested uniform rules for the mobility industry.Let’s Be Reasonable: The Consumer Expectations Test is Simply Not Viable to Determine Design Defect for Complex Autonomous Vehicle Technology
Although highly automated vehicles (“HAVs”) have potential to reduce deaths and injuries from traffic crashes, product liability litigation for design defects in vehicles incorporating autonomous technology is inevitable. During the early stages of implementation, courts and juries will be forced to grapple with the application of traditional product liability principles to a never before experienced category of highly technical products. Recent decisions limiting the use of the consumer expectations test in cases involving complex products prompted the authors to examine more closely the history behind and the future viability of the consumer expectations test in HAV litigation.The Deterrence Case for Comprehensive Automaker Enterprise Liability
This Article lays out the potential (at this point purely theoretical) deterrence benefits of replacing our current auto tort regime (including auto products liability law, driver-based negligence claims, and auto no-fault regimes) with a single, comprehensive automaker enterprise liability system. This new regime would apply not only to Level 5 vehicles, but to all automobiles made and sold to be driven on public roads. Because such a system would make automakers unconditionally responsible for the economic losses resulting from any crashes of their vehicles, it would in effect make automakers into auto insurers as well, although such a change will likely lead to some restructuring in how automobiles are insured and sold. Or so I will argue.The Future of Law and Mobility
With the launch of the new Journal of Law and Mobility, the University of Michigan is recognizing the transformative impact of new transportation and mobility technologies, from cars, to trucks, to pedestrians, to drones. The coming transition towards intelligent, automated, and connected mobility systems will transform not only the way people and goods move about, but also the way human safety, privacy, and security are protected, cities are organized, machines and people are connected, and the public and private spheres are defined. Law will be at the center of these transformations, as it always is. There has already been a good deal of thinking about the ways that law must adapt to make connected and automated mobility feasible in areas like tort liability, insurance, federal preemption, and data privacy. But it is also not too early to begin pondering the many implications for law and regulation arising from the technology’s spillover effects as it begins to permeate society. For better or worse, connected and automated mobility will disrupt legal practices and concepts in a variety of ways additional to the obvious “regulation of the car.” Policing practices and Fourth Amendment law, now so heavily centered on routine automobile stops, will of necessity require reconsideration. Notions of ownership of physical property (i.e., an automobile) and data (i.e., accident records) will be challenged by the automated sharing economy. And the economic and regulatory structure of the transportation network will have to be reconsidered as mobility transitions from a largely individualistic model of drivers in their own cars pursuing their own ends within the confines of general rules of the road to a model in which shared and interconnected vehicles make collective decisions to optimize the system’s performance. In these and many other ways, the coming mobility revolution will challenge existing legal concepts and practices with implications far beyond the “cool new gadget of driverless cars.” Despite the great importance of the coming mobility revolution, the case for a field of study in “law and mobility” is not obvious. In this inaugural essay for the Journal of Law and Mobility, I shall endeavor briefly to make that case.