🤷 Your Fault - MM#625
Who gets the blame can influence the world in very strange ways
Good day my good friend.
An underrated aspect of using public transport, one that is often promoted by operators but is ridiculed by people who haven’t used public transport in a long time (or who do but are weary with life), is that of getting the opportunity to take part in activities that make you happy. I would not have read half of the books that I have without the opportunity to sit and read on a train for an hour. My plying my way up and down the Thameslink route in recent months has allowed me to read, listen to podcasts, write this newsletter, and even finally beat Ganondorf in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
For all the times that we get frustrated with delays and cancellations (which are frustrating), public transport gives us that precious resource: time to have some fun. And you truly would have to be completely devoid of joy not to appreciate that.
If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else who you think will love it. The main way my audience grows is through your recommendations. I will love you forever if you do. ☺️
James
⚖️ Why assumed liability matters
The recent Automated Vehicle Bill, introduced to Parliament and a comprehensive read for any piece of legislation, sets out the regulatory framework by which autonomous vehicles will be governed in the UK. Its an excellent piece of legislation as drafted, building upon the extensive work of the Law Commission to establish a regulatory framework.
I don’t want to publish a full blow-by-blow account of all aspects of the legislation here. The Library Briefing of the House of Lords does this excellently, and I just want to focus on a single aspect here: assumed liability. The law itself defines a “User in Charge,” which essentially tries to provide a definition in law of when the power over using the vehicle transfers between the vehicle and the driver. The law states a user-in-charge is:
An individual is the “user-in-charge” of a vehicle if— (a) the vehicle is an authorised automated vehicle with an authorised user-in-charge feature, (b) that feature is engaged, and (c) the individual is in, and in position to exercise control of, the vehicle, but is not controlling it.
Furthermore, this definition can only be applied to vehicles that have an authorised automated driving operation - automated cars literally have to pass a driving test to be allowed to operate on public roads.
The Act establishes a principle that in situations when the user-in-charge is in control of the vehicle, or the user-in-charge is transferring operation of the vehicle back to the driver in a situation where careful and competent driving would not have prevented an incident from occurring, the user-in-charge and its operators are liable for any civil or criminal matters arising.
In effect, it is not the fault of the driver if something happened.
The Act itself states that the Secretary of State will bring forward Statutory Instruments (a mechanism by which authority is given to the Secretary of State to adopt secondary legislation) relating to individual road traffic offences. But the principle is set out in the Act, and if agreed is written in law.
And this is a really critical principle for a more sustainable and just future. Not because it means that companies won’t be able to get away with palming the fault for collisions onto the people in the vehicle, but because assumed liability plays a key role in how transport systems are designed and operated.
Underpinning design standards for new infrastructure and the Road Safety Assessments that come with any highway changes is a set of assumptions about how the average driver is expected to behave and react in a given situation. One of the basic assumptions is that drivers will act in accordance with the law, and one that exercises sound judgement in driving in a competent manner (in reality a Road Safety Assessment considers a number of other factors, but the basic assumption is the same). The former is dealt with through legislation and case law (which clarifies the meaning of the legislation), the latter is dealt with through the Highway Code.
What the Automated Vehicles Bill essentially says is that the same standard is expected of automated vehicles as it is that of a human driver, but there is the potential for such vehicles to be subject to greater standards of safety compared to human drivers. This means that the infrastructure we design in the future could be based on far stricter standards of safety than they are now, potentially making our roads much safer for everyone.
To give you a practical example of how this could work, much fanfare was made of the recent changes to the Highway Code that changed priorities to be more in favour of walking and cycling, such as having priority at side roads. Much of this based on ‘motorists being at fault’ or something similar. But the more revolutionary change is that when designing improvements to highways, engineers are now putting in things like pedestrian priority crossing points on side roads to reflect this new foundation in road user behaviour.
Assumed liability should not be considered as something that apportions blame or fault. It is something that is changing the fundamental principles of how roads are designed, and the Automated Vehicles Bill is just the latest aspect of this. The more our laws and driving standards shift assumed liability away from vulnerable road users and towards those in charge of the most damaging vehicles on our roads, the more we will be able to design better streets for our future.
What you can do: One of the biggest things that you can do is, as part of new highways schemes, ask for priority crossings for pedestrians on side roads. State that pedestrian priority is assumed as part of the Highway Code when asking for it. It seems like such a small change, but it will make a big difference to pretty much everyone!
🎓 From academia
The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author - they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.
Is access to public bike-share networks equitable? A multiyear spatial analysis across 5 U.S. Cities
TL:DR - There are more bike share stations in rich, white areas. It shouldn’t be like that.
Modeling car dependency and policies towards sustainable mobility: A system dynamics approach
TL:DR - Policies favouring road transport help re-inforce car dependency.
Are Norwegian car users ready for a transition to vehicle-to-grid technology?
TL:DR - Another example of people being familiar with the technology being more likely to consider adopting it.
TL:DR - Having access to many modes of transport is a pain if you are a driver.
✊ Awesome people doing awesome things
Council officer Pete Howarth of Coventry City Council gets a shout-out today. By going along to a meeting of residents to explain why their concerns about how safe a cycle scheme is are understandable, but not well-founded. And for Adam Tranter for going to the meeting and saying the same thing and saying that getting more people cycling will likely make things safer for everyone. The main safety concern? People won’t be able to see cyclists when they are pulling into their drives.
📼 On the (You)Tube
I recently posted something on the impact and history of misinformation. And this video by Now This contains a very succinct summary of the problem. Its very useful in boosting your own resilience to fake news.
📻 On the Wireless
The 99% Invisible Podcast recently did an episode on the Big Dig in Boston. Its a project where just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And this episode of this podcast goes into every single one of them. It may be the poster child of bad megaprojects, but more than once you will be thiking how tough of a break the engineers had.
📚 Random things
These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.
Why deals at COP28 to ‘triple renewables’ and ‘double efficiency’ are crucial for 1.5C (Carbon Brief)
Where a Junk Food Tax Will Limit What We Eat (EconLife)
Restructuring of the Global Economy (Naked Capitalism)
The vast majority of us have no idea what the padlock icon on our internet browser is – and it’s putting us at risk (The Conversation)
Role-playing climate resilience (Science)
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