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Tara Goddard's seminar on vulnerable road user safety and AV/partial AV at ITS-Davis includes the trolley problem, media critique, tech skepticism, and why we drivers are mostly horrible.

Tara Goddard is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Texas A&M. 

View the webinar here

Automated vehicles (AVs) can be a revolutionary safety technology, but they will still sometimes crash in novel or challenging circumstances. This webinar begins with a simple question: when AVs crash, who must pay for the damage they cause? The problem is that neither state nor federal law currently provides a straightforward, definitive answer to that question. Considering these vehicles are already testing on public roads, it is likely that there will be crash victims in the near future.

By Daniel Sperling and Scott Hardman

Dr. Austin Brown is Executive Director of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy at the University of California, Davis. 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.

The share of Americans who have used ride-sharing services more than doubled in the past three years. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2018, 36% of adults say they have used a ride-hailing service such as Uber or Lyft, compared to 15% in late 2015.

Half of U.S. adults think automated vehicles are more dangerous than traditional vehicles operated by people, while nearly two-thirds said they would not buy a fully autonomous vehicle, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

The three transportation "revolutions" – shared mobility, electrification and vehicle automation – are likely to radically transform transportation (and society, more in general). The adoption and frequency of use of (on demand) shared mobility services, including ridehailing (e.g. Uber and Lyft), carsharing, bikesharing and e-scooter sharing are already causing rapid changes in travel patterns and the use of other travel modes, in particular among younger travelers and urban residents.

The world has just 12 years to limit global warming to moderate levels, according to a recent United Nations report. In response, Democrats  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey laid out a grand plan for the nation to address climate change: the Green New Deal.

The state's goal of 5 million electric vehicles on roads by 2030 is a good example, according Austin Brown with the UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy.

Road congestion in the US cost US$305bn last year, mostly in lost time; the average Los Angeles driver spends a whopping 102 hours per year in traffic, for example. Increased driving and energy use has resulted in transportation edging out electricity as the top producer of US greenhouse-gas emissions. And while cars have grown far safer over the years, car crashes kill close to 40,000 people per year in the US and injure many more.

The Trump administration broke off vehicle mileage standards talks with California on Thursday, moving the two closer to a possible court battle that threatens to unsettle the auto industry.

Under the administration proposal, the standards would be frozen after slightly tougher 2020 levels go into effect, eliminating 10 miles per gallon of improvement to a fleet average of 36 miles per gallon in 2025.