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Transportation Law Commons

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Journal of Law and Mobility

Motor vehicles

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Transportation Law

How Reporters Can Evaluate Automated Driving Announcements, Bryant Walker Smith Jan 2020

How Reporters Can Evaluate Automated Driving Announcements, Bryant Walker Smith

Journal of Law and Mobility

This article identifies a series of specific questions that reporters can ask about claims made by developers of automated motor vehicles (“AVs”). Its immediate intent is to facilitate more critical, credible, and ultimately constructive reporting on progress toward automated driving. In turn, reporting of this kind advances three additional goals. First, it encourages AV developers to qualify and support their public claims. Second, it appropriately manages public expectations about these vehicles. Third, it fosters more technical accuracy and technological circumspection in legal and policy scholarship.


Let’S Be Reasonable: The Consumer Expectations Test Is Simply Not Viable To Determine Design Defect For Complex Autonomous Vehicle Technology, Emily Frascaroli, John Isaac Southerland, Elizabeth Davis, Woods Parker Jan 2019

Let’S Be Reasonable: The Consumer Expectations Test Is Simply Not Viable To Determine Design Defect For Complex Autonomous Vehicle Technology, Emily Frascaroli, John Isaac Southerland, Elizabeth Davis, Woods Parker

Journal of Law and Mobility

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.