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95 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 498 (2020)
Should Law Subsidize Driving?

handle is hein.journals/nylr95 and id is 498 raw text is: SHOULD LAW SUBSIDIZE DRIVING? GREGORY H. SHILL* A century ago, captains of industry and their allies in government launched a social experiment in urban America: the abandonment of mass transit in favor of a new personal technology, the private automobile. Decades of investment in this shift have created a car-centric landscape with Dickensian consequences. In the United States, motor vehicles are now the leading killer of children and the top producer of greenhouse gases. Each year, they rack up trillions of dollars in direct and indirect costs and claim nearly 100,000 American lives via crashes and pollution, with the most vulnerable paying a disproportionate price. The appeal of the car's conve- nience and the failure to effectively manage it has created a public health catas- trophe. Many of the automobile's social costs originate in individual preferences, but an overlooked amount is encouraged indeed enforced by law. Yes, the United States is car-dependent by choice. But it is also car-dependent by law. This Article conceptualizes this problem and offers a way out. It begins by identifying a submerged, disconnected system of rules that furnish indirect yet extravagant subsi- dies to driving. These subsidies lower the price of driving by comprehensively reas- signing its costs to non-drivers and society at large. They are found in every field of law, from traffic law to land use regulation to tax, tort, and environmental law. Law's role is not primary, and at times it is even constructive. But where it is destructive, it is uniquely so: Law not only inflames a public health crisis but legiti- mizes it, ensuring the continuing dominance of the car. The Article urges a reorientation of law away from this system of automobile supremacy in favor of consensus social priorities, such as health, prosperity, and equity. * Copyright © 2020 by Gregory H. Shill, Associate Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law; Visiting Scholar, American Bar Foundation; Program Affiliate Scholar, N.Y.U. School of Law. B.A., Columbia University; J.D., Harvard Law School. For their very helpful feedback, I thank Patrick Barry, Lisa Bernstein, Chris Bradley, Sara Bronin, Nestor Davidson, Chris Drahozal, Robin Effron, Sheila Foster, Peter Furth, Clay Gillette, Jack Goldsmith, Jesse Halfon, Cara Hamann, Rick Hills, John Infranca, Randall Johnson, David Kagan, Leandra Lederman, Michael Lewyn, Albert Lin, Marc Linder, James Lindgren, Irina Manta, Roger Noll, Peter Norton, Mark Osiel, Michael Pollack, Anya Prince, Jason Rantanen, Erin Ryan, David Schleicher, Angie Schmitt, Kenn Sebesta, Sarah Seo, Steve Shavell, Donald Shoup, Jacob Simmering, Holger Spamann, Kenneth Stahl, Ari Stern, Sean Sullivan, Cass Sunstein, Calvin Thigpen, Cristina Tilley, Ryan Westrom, and participants at the State & Local Government WIP at Fordham Law School, Celebrating Commons Scholarship at Georgetown University Law Center, Northwestern- Penn-Stanford Junior Faculty Forum for Law and STEM, Road Safety & Simulation, SEALS, and workshops at the law schools of the University of Chicago, Hofstra, Iowa, Northwestern, and Wayne State, and the urban planning schools of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. I am also grateful to Eremipagamo Amabebe and fellow editors of the New York University Law Review as well as Amy Koopmann and colleagues in the Iowa Law library, and to Allen Paxton, Melissa Sharp, and Matthew Strand for invaluable research assistance. Any errors are mine alone. 498 Imaged with Permission of N.Y.U. Law Review

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