This week, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that the National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST), housed at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis), would receive $20 million to lead a group of seven universities studying transportation effects on the environment. The award reinforces UC Davis’ standing as the nation’s leading university center on sustainable transportation.

The funding was granted as part of the Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Center (UTC) program. This year’s grant competition included a total of 230 applications, representing the largest number of applications ever submitted in the 35-year history of the UTC Program. The NCST is one of only five national transportation centers awarded under the UTC program, and the only one focused on the DOT research priority of Preserving the Environment.

The NCST’s $20 million grant ($4 million per year over 5 years) will allow researchers at UC Davis and other consortium member universities to focus on accelerating equitable decarbonization that benefits both the transportation system and the well-being of people in overburdened and historically disadvantaged communities. Research activities will concentrate in three critical domains: vehicle technology, infrastructure provision, and reshaping travel demand to accelerate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

“Finding a way to decarbonize transportation that does not exacerbate existing inequities is one of the most significant societal challenges we face,” said UC Davis Professor Susan Handy, Director of the NCST. “I am thrilled that we will have the opportunity to work with the U.S. Department of Transportation on this challenge and continue the important work we’ve been doing for the last nine years. With the new grant, we will expand our focus on equity and justice and launch new initiatives on rural mobility, vehicle electrification, and sustainable freight.”

The new grant also enables the NCST to expand its consortium. Professor Handy continued, “We are delighted to welcome Texas Southern University to our partnership.” TSU joins the original members of the NCST consortium: California State University Long Beach, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California Riverside, University of Southern California, and University of Vermont.

“TSU is honored to join the highly prestigious team of NCST and is truly excited for the opportunity to make contributions to research and education that promote a sustainable and equitable transportation development,” said Lei Yu, Professor of Transportation Studies and Director of TSU’s Innovative Transportation Research Institute (ITRI).

This round of funding marks the second time UC Davis has been able to renew its status as the host of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. Since its establishment in 2013, the NCST has helped to organize and fund research addressing urgent and critical transportation challenges, and its researchers have partnered with thought leaders and stakeholder groups to provide national leadership for advancing an environmentally sustainable transportation system.

“ITS-Davis is proud and honored to receive this award, recognizing our decades-long commitment to sustainable transportation,” said UC Davis Professor Dan Sperling, Founding Director of ITS-Davis. “Kudos to Susan Handy, our fearless leader of the Center since the first award from the DOT in 2013. We are on a mission to transition our transportation system to a more equitable, environmental, and economically sustainable future—in the U.S. and globally.”

The NCST provides national leadership in advancing environmentally sustainable transportation through cutting-edge research, direct policy engagement, and education of our future leaders. For more information on the center, visit: https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/

For more information on the announcement by the U.S. Department of Transportation, visit: https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-funds-innovative-research-providing-vital-training-next

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How we buy things has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Online shopping is up 30% in the US since 1999, accounting for almost 12% of all retail goods. Online companies have enticed shoppers with free shipping, free returns, and promises of faster and faster deliveries. Current stay-at-home conditions have reinforced this trend, increasing online orders another 30% since the COVID-19 epidemic began. Online purchases of some goods were up 10 fold in April and May.

We found, in a March 2020 study, that the upsurge in faster delivery times and more deliveries would lead to many more warehouses and truck trips closer to city and town centers–where people live.

Real estate data from our more recent study support this prediction. In five of California’s most populated regions, goods delivery companies are moving to smaller and more numerous warehouses and distribution centers, located closer to densely populated downtown areas. This shift increases truck traffic, even if the overall amount of cargo remains constant. More truck traffic means more greenhouse gas emissions and more pollution and noise in local communities.

Unfortunately, this increased pollution and noise tends to disproportionately impact disadvantaged communities. Since minorities and low-income communities make up a significant proportion of residents in disadvantaged communities, they are often burdened with the negative by-products of congestion and exposure to on-road emissions. We found a correlation between the number of warehouses and unhealthy air. While it’s unclear to what extent these warehouse facilities are the cause of this pollution, it is clear that the increased truck traffic is increasing congestion and degrading air quality—and generally in communities that are already overburdened. This inequity is demonstrated by the fact that about one-third of the regions we studied are classified as disadvantaged, but more than one-half of warehouse transactions in the past two decades have occurred in these areas—and are increasing.

It seems inevitable that online shopping will continue to grow. Making a few simple mouse clicks to accomplish a day’s worth of shopping is very appealing. The convenience to one segment of the population, however, is creating a burden to others. So what could or should be done about this shift?

First, local and regional agencies should adopt warehouse siting and air quality rules to mitigate those impacts—with a focus on protecting vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Public and private sector interventions could reduce commercial traffic on neighborhood streets and mitigate overall pollution associated with warehouses and trucks.

Second, the electrification of trucks and industrial vehicles (such as forklifts) should be accelerated. The California Air Resources Board has just adopted requirements for zero-emission trucks starting in 2024. Perhaps local governments, working closely with the private sector, could identify specific uses where the requirements may be expedited. Transitioning to cleaner delivery vehicles won’t mitigate traffic concerns, but would lessen their impact on local air quality.

Third, new policies or strategies could incentivize logistics companies and consumers to aggregate or batch deliveries and orders to minimize the total number of trips needed.

As online retail shopping continues to grow and as consumers demand faster deliveries, more effort is needed to address the downside of these changes, especially since those adverse impacts exacerbate the environmental, health, and traffic problems already burdening disadvantaged communities.

Miguel Jaller is Co-Director of the Sustainable Freight Research Center at ITS-Davis. He studies freight transportation, sustainable transportation systems, and humanitarian logistics.

Today the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies and the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy are launching a UC Davis blog on transportation, highlighting new research findings and insights important to transportation policy and decision-making. We see a moral and ethical obligation to better disseminate our mountains of research to inform policy, investments, and decisions in government and industry. We are especially focused on responding to disruptions caused by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the sharing, electric, and automation revolutions. We retain our commitment to sustainable transportation (including my beloved zero emission bike).

These blogs will be short and timely. It’s an experiment. We’ll try for every two weeks, starting next week! Sign up here.

Coming into 2020, the transportation world was already in turmoil. Transit ridership was declining in almost every city in the US, calls for decarbonizing transportation were intensifying, and the unfolding three revolutions of electric, shared, and automated vehicles were already disrupting cities.

Now, on top of those snowballing disruptions, comes the unprecedented turmoil of COVID-19. Transit decline is now freefall disaster. Airlines are decimated. Dockless scooters and bikes have nearly disappeared. Ride-hailing companies are barely surviving (saved in the case of Uber by a boom in food delivery). There is collateral damage all around, highlighted by the Hertz bankruptcy in May. Meanwhile, telecommunications is replacing many commute, medical, and shopping trips. To what extent will these changes in travel behavior persist? And how will transportation (and other) businesses respond?

We in the research world have a special responsibility to help add clarity. This blog series will tap into the vast pool of research being generated here at UC Davis. Next week we start with a stream of blogs that aim to inform current policy and decision-making in government and industry. Upcoming blogs will explore the transformation of local goods delivery, the rise of electric trucks, the comeback of sharing in a COVID world, and much more. Sign up here.

The spark for this series was Kate Gordon, the “climate czar” for Governor Newsom of California, and a longtime leader and expert on economic development, jobs, climate housing, and transportation. In her keynote talk at the (virtual) biannual UC Davis Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways symposium (May 21), she called for researchers in this time of need to step up and accelerate the dissemination of research and insights. We were struck by her call to action and the plethora of policy-relevant research being presented by researchers.

To assist us, we invite policymakers and decisionmakers to send us their wish list of what they need to know about transportation to make better decisions. We’ll make every effort to respond with thoughtful science-based blogs taken from our research at UC Davis and elsewhere. Stay tuned. Sign up here.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having huge impacts on transportation. Telecommuting trends may persist. Traffic is down, bus and train schedules have been slashed, and air travel is at levels last seen in the 1950s. COVID-19 is affecting transportation today, and the pandemic will likely have huge impacts on how we get around in the future. This blog series explores intersections between the COVID-19 pandemic and the “3 Revolutions” in transportation: shared mobility, vehicle electrification, and vehicle automation. The goal of this blog series is to identify key strategies that can help transportation leaders in pursuing climate and equity objectives – after the worst of the pandemic subsides. If we can respond to the enormous challenge that this virus poses, it will also enable us to increase the resilience of our transportation systems, and respond to similar crises that may emerge in years to come.

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Part 1: COVID-19 Will Not Cancel Shared Travel

When the virus wanes, what can encourage people to return to shared travel—and ensure it is safe to do so? Shared travel makes transportation more affordable, equitable, sustainable, and logistically feasible. But fears of sharing may linger. Shared modes will need to come back safer, better, and more reliable than they were prior to the pandemic, or people will not share.

Transit

During the pandemic, public transit has been one of the hardest-hit modes of transportation. Data from mobile apps indicates that transit ridership has plunged by 50% or more in major cities around the world and transit demand in the United States has dropped by nearly 80% nationwide. Google reported that in early April, foot traffic at transit stations was down by more than 50%. These numbers are especially stark when compared to other transportation modes. Apple, for instance, has recorded a 76% drop in routing queries for transit during the pandemic but only a 45% drop in queries for driving. Similar patterns are being reported overseas. Researchers at ETH Zurich showed a much larger decline in the use of public transit than other travel modes.

While this transit ridership freefall is unprecedented, transit was already in big trouble before COVID-19. Most U.S. transit operators saw declining ridership and fare revenues prior to the pandemic. This is due to many factors– including increased competition from ridehailing and reductions in barriers to auto ownership. But the pandemic may take the difficult situation for transit operators from bad to worse. Fare revenues only cover a small portion of many agency’s budgets. Local funds tied to tax revenues make up the large part of many of our nation’s transit budgets. The looming pandemic era recession could serve another hit to those transit agencies reliant on sales taxes. Federal funding will play a key role in filling growing budget gaps. The CARES Act includes $26 billion to support transit, but it may not be enough for many struggling agencies.

Transit operators will need to leverage additional resources to tackle both COVID-19 issues and broader ridership decline issues head on. Operators are already working with health authorities to keep transit workers and riders safe during the pandemic. Operators are taking a number of different types of actions including by erecting Plexiglas barriers to protect drivers and ticket sellers, frequently cleaning stations and vehicles, eliminating fare payment, and implementing other policies and procedures designed to minimize potential contamination. Personal protective equipment (PPE) is a priority for drivers and riders in paratransit shuttle services, where close interactions are often necessary in order to secure passengers’ wheelchairs into vehicles.

These practices will need to start now and continue as the economy reopens. New informational campaigns will also be critical in raising public awareness of safety practices, ensuring that people feel safe and comfortable enough to return to transit. And as though implementing these safety protective practices is not enough work, agencies will also need to redouble their efforts to compete for riders. The coming era for transit will require innovation. Flexible service options and new financing tools will enable operators to strategically fill gaps and bring back riders.

Ridehailing

The two main ridehailing service providers, Uber and Lyft, have taken a variety of steps to respond to COVID-19. Remarkably, both companies are discouraging use of their services, displaying messages that remind consumers to travel only when necessary. Both companies are also providing some drivers with cleaning and sanitization materials (though perhaps without fully meeting demand).

Both companies have paused shared ride features (i.e., UberPool and Lyft Share) in their respective apps. The pandemic could certainly have sustained impacts on the popularity of shared ridehailing, despite the previous period of growth for shared ridehailing. Pricing structures and marketing will affect the rate at which consumers return to each, and there may be a role for policy. Collaborations between ridehailing companies and public health officials to restrict access to shared vehicles for those with contagious diseases could also bolster consumer confidence in ridehailing safety. Ridehailing data and other travel data can also help experts track how diseases spread (or predict how they could spread).

Ridehailing services also filled various gaps in the transportation network during the crisis. Ridehailing can be an alternative option for those dependent on transit, when transit schedules have been cut. Both Uber and Lyft are partnering with healthcare organizations and hospitals to offer nonemergency medical transportation for those without ready access to a car or other convenient travel options. The nation’s largest microtranst operator, Via, developed a semi-private version of its app dedicated to helping essential employees get to work. This type of gap service could be a good addition to a city or region’s emergency preparedness planning efforts.

Bikeshare and e-scooter share

Bike gears and scooter wheels kept turning during the early stages of the pandemic. Use of bike and e-scooter sharing services (i.e., micromobility) in places like New York and San Francisco spiked in March as people sought to avoid traveling in confined spaces. As concern over COVID-19 grew, cities and companies disagreed on the appropriate role for micromobility. The City of Sacramento asked Jump (Uber’s scooter division) to remove its shared bikes and scooters from city streets. Lime and Bird, two of the largest micromobility companies in the world, paused operations in markets across the world. Yet Wuhan, China simultaneously relied on scooter-based delivery to supply residents on lockdown with groceries and other goods. The e-scooter company Spin argued that its service enabled essential workers to travel safely.

The story of micromobility during the COVID-19 pandemic yields two lessons. First, micromobility—like ridehailing—is an important complement to public transit. Shared bikes and scooters may not be able to get people as far as commuter trains and buses, but they can help keep people and goods moving around dense urban areas when other travel modes fail. Second, cities need to work with health authorities and researchers to understand the true health risks that shared bikes and e-scooters pose—and then coordinate with each other on an appropriate response. If the risk is low, cities could promote bike and e-scooter sharing as good alternatives to public transit or driving during health emergencies. Many cities also already subsidize use of shared bikes and e-scooters for historically underserved populations. For these communities especially, but also for all communities, additional subsidies that support frequently cleaning micromobility units will ensure that riders are safe.

The bottom line

A safe return to shared travel is necessary— and it will be a difficult task. The challenges in our immediate path are significant, but the first step is envisioning good outcomes for a sustainable transportation future. Without a commitment to shared mobility—especially mass transit and pooled rides—we will see a resurgence of single-occupant vehicles and an undermining of progress towards climate and equity objectives.

Almost all trucks today are powered by diesel engines and fossil fuel. Changing how trucks are powered is essential to solving the problems of air pollution and climate change. After all, trucks account for a substantial share of both pollutant emissions and CO₂ emissions on California’s roadways. But what are the feasible strategies and costs for reaching a future with zero- or very-low-emissions trucks?

This question becomes even more challenging when focusing on “long-haul” trucks. Such trucks, typically tractor/trailer Class 8 vehicles weighing up to 33,000 pounds unloaded, can travel 500 miles or more per day, and have some challenging energy requirements—they must be able to carry enough energy, or have rapid access to it, to be able to travel these distances with up to a 40,000-pound payload.

From a regulatory perspective, the California Air Resources Board is in the process of proposing a new truck sales mandate that would require truck manufacturers to sell ZEV trucks, starting in 2024.

How can we power such vehicles with zero emissions? At the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis, we strove to answer this question from a research perspective by looking at four technologies designed to provide power to long-haul trucks while producing zero tailpipe emissions. These technologies are: a catenary system; hydrogen fuel cells; dynamic inductive chargers embedded in the roadway (capable of charging moving trucks); and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). The first three of these are covered in a full report (here) and BEVs will be covered in an upcoming report.

We compared the technologies to each other and to a baseline diesel truck—in terms of technical requirements, current status, challenges, costs, and the potential for future improvements and scale-up. We considered both the vehicles and the energy infrastructure they would need to operate. We modeled a future (maybe 10 years out) where both trucks and infrastructure benefit from economies of scale. For our comparisons, we simulated a situation with 5000 trucks travelling 500 miles of roadway per day (which is a lot). We amortized the vehicle and infrastructure costs over this level of service and over many years (i.e., 20 years to pay off the infrastructure, 5 years for trucks with some resale value).

Though there are many factors affecting the comparison, and we consider a range of sensitivity cases, the figure shows our “base case” results: costs per mile for diesel and the first three technologies. The three cleaner technologies are all within 30% of the cost of diesel but none quite match it. The preliminary results for BEVs (not shown), based on slightly different assumptions, indicate that their total costs in a long-haul situation could be on the low side, ranging from $0.45–0.82 per mile versus $0.58 per mile for diesel.

In all cases the range of costs reflects uncertainties in vehicle costs, infrastructure costs, and energy costs. But it’s the energy costs (brown part of bars in the figure) that appear to be the most important and most uncertain. Electricity could run from $0.10 to $0.25 per kWh, depending on the nature of the contracts, whether pricing is closer to retail or wholesale, etc. Future hydrogen costs could vary from about $5 to $8 per kg (when derived from electrolysis), assuming large scale development and access to relatively inexpensive renewable power. The base technology, diesel, has a cost that is highly dependent on oil prices, which could range from $50 to $100/bbl or even higher. High- or low-end assumptions on each of these energy prices leads to a relatively good or poor position relative to the others.

Figure: Relative cost per mile of different technologies based on 500 miles of roadway.

But what exactly are these technologies? What are their advantages and disadvantages?

In the catenary system, overhead wires deliver power through a pantograph with electrical contacts rising off the top of the vehicle. Catenary systems have been widely used for light rail and trolleys, so the technology is well developed. Trials of catenary trucks are underway in Sweden and the Port of Los Angeles. The major challenges would be to install the infrastructure and provide another power source to trucks for when they leave wired roadways.

Dynamic inductive (or “wireless”) charging similarly provides electric power to moving vehicles, from a series of transmitting coils embedded in the roadway. The charge is delivered, with about 90% efficiency, over a short distance to a receiving coil on the bottom of a vehicle. The challenges and costs are like those of the catenary system, but this system would require installation of transmission coils in road beds. Like a catenary system, this system would require the installation of at least hundreds of miles of infrastructure before it would likely be sufficient to attract users—truckers willing to invest in the equipment needed to be compatible. Indeed, this chicken-egg dilemma is a factor for all four technologies: which comes first, investment in infrastructure or vehicles?

Hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) vehicles use hydrogen, as a liquid or compressed gas, to generate electricity from an on-board fuel cell. The hydrogen takes up less volume and weight than do batteries, and refueling is much faster than battery charging. A hydrogen system could also be scaled-up more cheaply and evenly than catenaries or inductive charging. However, infrastructure challenges are considerable in terms of the transportation (or on-site generation) and storage of hydrogen, as refueling stations would have to be 10–30 times larger than diesel stations. Two HFC trucks have been produced, the Vision Tyrano (200-mile range) and Nikola One (800- to 1200-mile range).

Battery electric long-haul trucks typically rely on plugging-in to be recharged (though we do assume some battery electric range for trucks accessing catenaries or dynamic induction systems). Most battery trucks currently have a range of less than 250 miles. The major challenges in applying this technology to long-haul trucks are the large quantity and weight of the required batteries. We estimate that about 1200 kWh would be needed, with a weight of well over 10,000 pounds. This means long recharging times and a potentially large reduction in payload (since battery weight takes away from what could be allocated for goods). In our analysis we assume some reductions in battery weight in the future and access to fast charging, but these two concerns remain.

As long as available electricity is from low carbon sources (namely renewables), the CO₂ emissions for catenary, dynamic inductive charging, and BEVs would be low. (The electric grid in California is targeted to be fully renewable by 2040.) The same is true for HFC trucks using electrolytically generated hydrogen, though in the nearer term, the lower efficiency of these trucks (and production of hydrogen) would mean higher CO₂ than the pure electric options. CO₂ would also be considerably higher if the hydrogen were derived from steam methane reforming of natural gas, which is common today.

In sum, each technology has several advantages and challenges, and there is no obvious winner. From the point of view of infrastructure needs and scale-up, hydrogen may have an advantage. Battery electric trucks provide an attractive option with lower infrastructure costs and potentially lower overall costs but would compromise payloads unless the weight of batteries comes down significantly or compromises are made on range. Finally, catenary and inductive charging systems could work best in areas of dense truck traffic but will need to be extensive enough to work for trucks covering many miles and will require the biggest up-front investments.

Two major questions that need further research are: How do we best manage scaling-up each technology? And how large will public investments and incentives need to be to create a self-sustaining system with adequate infrastructure? The UC Davis STEPS+ Program and Sustainable Freight Research Center will continue to work in this area.

This blog is drawn from a Caltrans “Planning Horizons” educational forum presented by Dr. Fulton this spring. To view a video of his presentation click here and select March 2019. To access the PowerPoint from the presentation click here. To access the full report that this blog and the talk are based on click here.

Note: This blog was originally published on 3/29/2019 by the legal news service Law360.

The automated vehicle revolution has begun, and will accelerate in the near future. AVs are vehicles that automate the act of driving. Many current-model cars already incorporate features such as adaptive cruise control, self-parking and lane-keeping assistance.

But a larger paradigm shift will occur in the near future when high-level AVs capable of full self-driving will reach some markets. Experts predict these vehicles will be safer than human-driven vehicles, but they will still sometimes crash and cause injuries.

The current auto liability framework works well for human-driven vehicles. However, it assumes a neat distinction between “the driver,” a human who is always responsible for controlling the vehicle, and “the manufacturer,” a company with no post-sale control over the vehicle.

Approximately 94 percent of car crashes are caused by human driver error; here, the human driver can be liable but the vehicle manufacturer cannot. Conversely, approximately 2 percent of car crashes are caused by a defect in the vehicle; here, the vehicle manufacturer can be liable but the human driver cannot. Both scenarios assume one party (but not the other) is presumptively “at fault” for a crash. Liability flows from this fault determination; fault flows from control.

In a self-driving car, however the vehicle’s true “driver” — the party actually controlling the vehicle — is not the human but the vehicle itself. Several recent AV prototypes do not even have a steering wheel or pedals for the human occupant to use. In this type of vehicle, the human vehicle occupant cannot exert control over the vehicle and thus cannot make a driver error. This is significant: in a self-driving car, the traditional pathway to human liability is foreclosed.

If the human driver cannot be liable, it is likely that liability will shift to the manufacturer. The bigger question, however, is whether the liability standard will also shift accordingly. Human drivers are typically evaluated under a negligence standard; manufacturers are typically evaluated under a strict products liability standard. As we shall explain, the combination of manufacturer-borne liability with a default products liability standard could threaten the societal gains we could achieve through AV usage.

The prospect of assigning all AV liability to manufacturers has theoretical appeal: After all, the manufacturer of the self-driving software is presumably the only party capable of controlling or improving the safety of the vehicle. And from an economic perspective, assigning liability costs to the manufacturer, the “cheapest cost avoider” in this scenario, should incentivize the manufacturer to maximize safety precautions. This would benefit AV consumers and to all other parties sharing the roads with these vehicles as well.

However, if we assign all AV liability to manufacturers, these manufacturers could incur significant liability costs. This strikes us as fundamentally fair: If manufacturers want the financial benefits of selling a proprietary and potentially dangerous product, they should assume the financial risks associated with the product as well. The problem is not the assignment of liability; it is the assignment of litigation costs. Products liability litigation is notoriously time-consuming and difficult — thus, invariably, expensive.

Applying products liability to self-driving cars will not benefit most victim-plaintiffs. Given that AV technology is proprietary, and assuming that manufacturers will fight to protect their source code from discovery, it is not clear where a plaintiff will be able to find a qualified expert who can identify the particular software error that yielded a particular crash. And even if such an expert were available, the legal costs of launching a products liability lawsuit may easily exceed most routine damage claims. Attorneys, not victims, will reap the benefits of this system.

Products liability will also be costly for manufacturers. Even if we are comfortable with manufacturers assuming the costs of victim compensation, the frequency and costliness of defending against products liability lawsuits is problematic for two reasons. First, those litigation costs will ultimately be passed on to consumers, driving up the cost of AV use and ownership. Second, these litigation costs may force smaller manufacturers out of the market, creating oligopoly.

Both of these situations would likely reduce the number of AVs on the road. And if, as we predict, the use of AVs is a net positive for society — if AV usage can improve road safety, increase access to mobility, reduce vehicle emissions, aid in the movement towards sustainable city design, etc. — then the last thing we should want to do is create a liability system that reduces the quality and quantity of available AVs.

The solution to this problem is to create a manufacturer liability standard that is less costly to both victims and manufacturers. We suggest a manufacturer negligence standard. Here, when an AV crashes, the court could assess the vehicle’s actions under the “reasonable human driver” standard. Thus, if the AV’s actions would be deemed negligent if performed by a human driver (for example, speeding or disobeying a traffic signal), the manufacturer would be liable.

The value of this system is that the court’s analysis could be focused on the crash itself — what the vehicle actually did — rather than analyzing the self-driving software’s source code to determine whether the vehicle was defectively designed. This would be a much easier and less time-consuming (thus cheaper) analytical mode for all parties.

An alternative solution might be to create a victim compensation fund, allowing injured victims to bypass the courts and products liability altogether. This fund could be created from mandatory contributions from manufacturers in proportion to each manufacturer’s market share, or each manufacturer’s share of total AV crashes. A compensation fund could also help victims recover for their injuries more quickly and with less uncertainty than through the litigation process.

If AVs are better for society than human-driven vehicles, we should design our liability to promote their usage. Products liability is simply too costly — both in terms of financial costs and also in terms of the value lost by reducing AV usage — to be the proper legal standard for analyzing AV crashes.

This blog is based on a series of four 2019 issue papers on possible approaches to liability and insurance for automated vehicles.

Gordon Anderson is a legal fellow at the UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy and a third-year student at King Hall, UC Davis School of Law.

Austin Brown is executive director of the Policy Institute. In this role he builds strong connections between the research and policy communities at the local, state, and national levels with a focus on clean energy and sustainable transportation.