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2020 J.L. & Mobility 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/jlwmby2020 and id is 1 raw text is: HOW REPORTERS CAN EVALUATE
AUTOMATED DRIVING
ANNOUNCEMENTS
BRYANT WALKER SMITH
Cite as: Bryant Walker Smith, How Reporters Can Evaluate Automated
Driving Announcements,
2020 J. L. & MOB. 1.
This manuscript may be accessed online at https://futurist.law.umich.edu
and at https://repository.law.umich.edu/jlm/.
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.
This third purpose goes to the core of this interdisciplinary journal. Legal
and policy scholarship about emerging technologies often relies at least in
part on popular reporting. On one hand, this reporting can provide timely and
accessible insights into these technologies, particularly when the scientific
literature cannot. On the other hand, this reporting can reflect misconceptions
based on incomplete information supplied by self-interested developers-
misconceptions that are then entrenched through legal citation. For example,
I have pushed back against claims that automated driving will be a panacea,2
1. These questions first appeared in Questions to Ask About AV Announcements,
LAW OF THE NEWLY POSSIBLE, www.newlvpossible.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ouestions
to Ask About AV Announcements (last updated Oct. 14, 2019). This article updates
and explains them.
2. See Bryant Walker Smith, How Governments Can Promote Automated Driving,
47 N.M. L. REV. 99 (2017); Bryant Walker Smith, Managing Autonomous
Transportation Demand, 52 SANTA CLARA L. REV. 1401 (2012).

1

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