Professor William Widen’s paper “Highly Automated Vehicles & Discrimination Against Low-Income Persons”, published in the North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology, was discussed in the latest episode of The Explainer.
The push for automated vehicles has been lauded as likely leading to a safer driving future. But the question is whether the costs that we pay to reach that destination are fairly distributed across economic groups. Widen says they are not, and the failure to take this into account exemplifies troubling issues with the regulatory state, involving issues like industry capture of regulators and the absence of political will to protect the most vulnerable among us when innovative products hail a brighter future for all. Further Widen addresses efforts at the state level that have inhibited local governments from addressing these issues on their own. Listen to the podcast here.
Widen teaches commercial law, contracts, and other business subjects at Miami Law. A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, Professor Widen clerked in 1983-1984 for Levin Campbell, Chief Judge of the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
