All content tagged with: Regulation
Filter
Post List
Regulatory Frameworks for Smart Mobility: Current U.S. Regulation of Connected and Automated Vehicles And The Road Ahead
Survey of current federal and state legislative and regulatory frameworks aimed at advancing the deployment of connected and autonomous vehicles.How Might We Reimagine Transportation Technology to Combat Forced Labor: Conference Explanations and Recommendations From the Law and Mobility Program’s Annual Conference 2023
The LAMP Annual Conference 2023 considered how we might reimagine transportation technology in a way that combats the systemic vulnerabilities...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.Preemptive Federal Legislation for EV Manufacturers to Sell Direct to Customers
This article advocates for federal legislation to implement a nationwide EV licensing system that would allow both EV manufacturers and dealers to sell and service their vehicles directly to consumers nationwide. This prospective legislation would preempt dealer franchise laws that prohibit or limit manufacturers from selling their vehicles directly to consumers. This article does not argue that direct distribution is the superior method of distribution; instead, this article argues that manufacturers should have the freedom to pursue direct distribution. As more EV companies enter the market, EV manufacturers need to have the flexibility to use a variety of distribution systems that best suit their business needs. Part II of this article provides background information on the history of dealer franchise laws and the current status of dealer franchise laws. Part III addresses the problems associated with the current car buying process and why some manufacturers prefer to sell their cars directly to consumers. Part III also addresses counterarguments from the dealer lobby. Part IV introduces potential federal legislative reform to preempt state dealer franchise laws to allow EV manufacturers to directly sell their vehicles to consumers.An Uncertain Framework: Privacy and Data Security Regulation Advances Long After Transportation Technology
It’s time to be honest with ourselves: a lot of us love the convenience of facial recognition software (FRS) especially when it comes to unlocking our cell phones. There is officially no reason to get Cheeto dust on your screen while you Instagram stalk your former high school classmates before…Promoting Micromobility Usage Through the Internal Revenue Code
Micromobility services like scooter and bikeshares provide numerous benefits to riders, local governments, and the public at large. A 2021 CBInsights report summarizes micromobility’s many upsides: “micromobility services increase access to public transportation, reduce the amount of cars on the road, lower our environmental footprint, and provide convenient methods…Electric Vehicles and Gas Tax
Across the United States an average of just over a third of all highway spending comes from a gas tax imposed by the state, with further funding being provided by a federal gas tax. It ranges across states from as low as 4.5 % of funding for highway spending in…Expanding and Modernizing Rail Infrastructure
The railway is a part of the American ethos. Without rivers to carry us from one end of the country to another, and with horses unable to travel coast to coast, the railway was king. By 1860 there were 30,000 miles of railway crisscrossing the country. By 1915 the number…Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles a Practical, Ethical, and Sustainable option?
The environmental impacts of the transportation industry have been at the forefront of mobility discourse for the last decade. With 27% of greenhouse gas emissions coming from transportation and a significant percentage of low-income households’ total earnings going to transportation (over 30% in some instances), the need to…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…