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Regulating Drone Delivery Networks
For over a decade, drone delivery has been heralded as the next frontier of commercial transportation and logistics. However, drone delivery companies have been unable to scale their operations. Part of the problem, from the perspective of the companies invested in drone delivery, were federal regulations that in effect prohibited…A Golden Age for Us . . . or for the Airlines? Ensuring Robust Federal Consumer Protections to Make Flying Great Again for Everyone
Flying today is not meaningfully better for passengers than it was twenty years ago—and the airlines are largely to blame. Airlines leverage opaque pricing practices and junk fees to extract greater revenue from passengers, while the quality of air travel has deteriorated. Despite its mandate to protect the flying public and the air travel market from deceptive and anticompetitive practices, the Department of Transportation has been largely captured—adopting industry-favorable regulations and procedures while cutting commonsense consumer protections. This Essay examines the airlines’ coordinated campaign to circumvent and dismantle consumer protections, and how the industry have largely captured the federal agency designed to regulate it. We conclude that ushering in the “Golden Age of Travel” requires a rejection of the airlines’ heavy-handed deregulatory agenda and a turn towards passenger-focused consumer protections that restore fairness and accountability to the skies.
Accounting for Spatial Effects and Social Norms in Making Algorithmic Law: Insights from and Applications in Urban Mobility
This Article examines a prominent idea in the law and technology literature: that algorithms and big data can be used to make law dynamic and personalized. As currently envisioned by legal scholars, “algorithmic law” entails laws that adjust in real time to changing conditions and vary across individuals, improving…
The Hard Law-Soft Law Nexus: Autonomous Vehicles as a Case Study
The technology governance debate often focuses on the dichotomy of hard law versus soft law as competing models. Both hard law and soft law have their strengths and weaknesses. But framing soft law versus hard law as a dichotomous choice is often unrealistic—every technology will be governed by a mix…Automobilities, Cultures and the Question of Law
Book ReviewUnsettling Colonial Automobilities: Criminalisation and Contested Sovereignties. By Thalia Anthony, Juanita Sherwood, Harry Blagg, and Kieran Tranter. Leeds, United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing. 2023. Pp. xx, 195. $110.00. Introduction Unsettling Colonial Automobilities: Criminalisation and Contested Sovereignties is a compelling interdisciplinary and multileveled study that sits at the intersection…
Sustainable Mobility in International, European and National Law: A Perspective from Europe
This Article develops a European perspective on sustainable mobility, a concept still underexamined in legal scholarship, and argues that meeting today’s mobility needs while preserving ecological foundations for future generations will not occur without deliberate regulatory intervention. After clarifying the evolution of the core concepts of sustainability, mobility, and sustainable…Neighborliness vs. Car Culture: Traffic Violence, Pedestrian Deaths in Philadelphia, and Vision Zero’s Concept of Equity
Vision Zero’s goal of traffic violence abolition and greater traffic safety for pedestrians and other non-driving users of the transportation system will require not only engineering fixes, but also empowered community engagement and participation.Smartphones on Wheels in Southeast Asia: A Crossroads for Data Governance
While the transformation of automobiles into data-generating “smartphones on wheels” has revolutionized mobility, it has also raised critical concerns over data privacy and sovereignty. Equipped with sensors and connected technologies, smart vehicles collect vast amounts of data, including personal information, driving patterns, and biometric identifiers. While auto-exporting jurisdictions…
Human Masters/Robot Servants: Highly Automated Vehicle Design, Intoxicated Drivers & Vicarious Liability
A traditional engineering role is to design a safe product. Safety engineering is an exercise in harm avoidance ex ante. In contrast, liability attribution is an exercise to compensate for loss post hoc—traditionally viewed as a legal matter. We observe that, when a natural person incurs liability for a loss…
Lunar Refueling: Legal Issues and Suggested Solutions
Lunar refueling is expected to empower the lunar economy and transform the Moon into a gateway for deep-space missions, facilitating exploration of destinations like Mars and asteroids, it also raises legal and environmental concerns.