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A Comparative Look at Various Countries’ Legal Regimes Governing Automated Vehicles
News and commentary about automated vehicles (AVs) focus on how they look and appear to operate, along with the companies developing and testing them. Behind the scenes are legal regimes—laws, regulations, and implementing bodies of different kinds—that literally and figuratively provide the rules of the road for AVs. Legal regimes matter because public welfare hinges on aspects of AV design and operation. Legal regimes can provide gatekeeping for AV developers and operators seeking to use public roads, and they can allocate liability when something goes wrong. Guiding and complementing legal regimes is public policy. Policy documents such as articulations of national strategies are sometimes used to address issues related to legal regimes and to demonstrate a jurisdiction’s support for AV development. Building on its long history analyzing AV policy issues, RAND (with support of its Institute for Civil Justice) collaborated with the University of Michigan Law School’s Law and Mobility Program to study the nature of different AV legal regimes around the world. It selected countries known to be active in this domain. The research team reviewed and shared scholarly and gray literature (which is a type of scholarship produced by an entity in which commercial publications are not the primary focus, such as white papers from a government agency), and it also consulted experts in these regimes from the public and private sectors. Under the supervision of the Law and Mobility Fellow (a lawyer), law students collected and studied materials associated with country-specific legal regimes and drafted summaries guided by RAND’s enumeration of key factors. Availability of information about legal regimes varies—access to documentation, especially in English, is uneven, even for officials in different countries working collaboratively on these issues. That constrained availability is reflected in published legal comparisons, and it motivated the research team’s systematic research, which drew from materials in English and other languages. This article summarizes the makeup of AV legal regimes of Australia, China, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. It highlights some key contrasts, which will be developed further as the project continues. It focuses on law and policy relating to highly to fully automated vehicles (SAE Levels 4 and 5). Although guided by a common set of topics for each country, each profile reflects the material available and the factors that differentiate national approaches. The remainder of this article introduces the legal regimes of the covered countries in turn. It then provides an overview of key points of comparison and outlines future work.Setting the Agenda: The Legal and Historical Context to Best Understand How Transportation Technology Might Be Regulated to Combat Forced Labor
Transportation is a piece of all human activity. As individuals and as a society, the logistics of getting people and goods from one place to another is a question we answer countless times a day. Just today, billions of people drove to work, took the bus to school, used a rideshare to get to the store, or took the train into the city to enjoy an evening out on the town. This list does not even consider all the items people have ordered online which will be shipped and delivered to homes. Even more exciting is the innovation that inspired all the aforementioned modes of transportation; transportation technology has the amazing potential to make our lives easier, more efficient, and more equitable. But implementing all this technology requires labor, and the technology can only benefit those who have access to it. Most of us have never truly considered whose labor makes mobility possible. Relatedly, it is hard to imagine life without access to transportation if you are a person who has always known how they will get to work. This article will provide a framework to better understand one type of labor within the industry, exploited labor, also known as forced labor. Forced labor is part of the transportation industry and is also impacted by a lack of transportation. Without reliable and safe transportation individuals are at a higher risk of forced labor in other industries. The bottom line is twofold: considering the impacts that an increased demand for new technology will have on people who work in mines, in the supply chain, and in transportation as a service, as well as considering legal tools to maximize access to transportation for historically underserved communities in light of new technology. All this to say that this article will consider how society might reimagine the regulation of emerging transportation technology in a way that combats the systemic vulnerability that leaves people at risk of forced labor. This will include both the labor being performed to manufacture and operate the technology, as well as the impact on access to transportation of the user and nonuser. Though this article will largely analyze the role of automated vehicles, other innovations including reconfigured public transportation and electrification will also be considered. Transportation is at the heart of everything humanity does and yet this article will only scratch the surface of these issues.A Story of Two Transportation Projects: India’s Bullet Train and Sri Lanka’s Port
Two infrastructure projects in South Asia were built on the promises of East Asian trading partners and on extensive lines of credit. Though both are characterized by extensive delays, why is one celebrated as an important step forward towards infrastructure modernization, and the other derided as “debt-trap diplomacy”? In…The Relationship Between Social Innovation and Active Mobility Public Services
This article aims to discuss the relationship between social innovation and public services on active mobility. Two active mobility initiatives are considered in the city of São Paulo, and analyzed based on 11 variables that characterize social innovation. Through the mapping of recent Brazilian regulatory frameworks for active mobility and a low-carbon economy, we can propose the following relationship: the more local (municipal) the public policy, the greater its social influence and participation. However, despite the advances indicated by both experiences of active mobility analyzed (highlighting the role of organized civil society), and by the progress in the regulatory framework, until now innovative practices in the local context have been restricted to the treatment of pedestrian spaces. Therefore, there exists a great potential for the continued introduction of innovations in the improvement and scale of public services for pedestrian mobility, following the paradigm of sustainable urban mobility, and based on social participation.Coronavirus is Affecting More than Just Physical Health
The past few weeks have shown the intricate connection that access to transportation has with human health and the global economy. The outbreak of Coronavirus in Wuhan China, leading to mass international transportation restrictions, is a case study in the effects that transportation has on our daily lives and on…Autonomous Ships and the Future of the Shipping Industry
Developments in technology have led to an increased reliance on artificial intelligence and autonomy in various vehicles such as cars, planes, helicopters and trains. The latest vehicles to implement autonomous technology into their operations are shipping vessels. Autonomous ships will transform the industry and current regulations are being reassessed to…October 2019 Mobility Grab Bag
October 2019 Mobility Grab Bag Every month brings new developments in mobility, so let’s take a minute to breakdown a few recent developments that touch on issues we’ve previously discussed in the blog: New AV Deployments This month saw a test deployment of Level 4 vehicles in London,…The More Data, The Merrier? Sidewalk Labs May Be Sidelined in Toronto
In 2015, Google’s parent, Alphabet, decided the time was ripe for establishing a subsidiary in charge of investing in “smart infrastructure” projects – from waste to transport and energy. Its aim was specifically to implement such projects, transforming our urban landscape into a realm of dynamic and connected infrastructure…Montréal’s soon-to-be-short-lived experiment with scooters?
Anyone currently living in a large city or an American college town has had some experiences with scooters – would that be the mere annoyance of having them zip around on sidewalks. Or, as a friend of mine did, attempt to use one without checking first where the throttle is……AV Safety at the UN: Why Does It Matter?
I previously blogged on automated emergency braking (AEB) standardization taking place at the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (also known as WP.29), a UN working group tasked with managing a few international conventions on the topic, including the 1958 Agreement on wheeled vehicles standards. It turns…