A new paper accounts for all the ways "the legal system puts its thumb on the scale for drivers to the detriment of everyone else: transit users, cyclists and pedestrians."
Angie Schmitt spreads the word about a paper by Greg Shill, a law professor at University of Iowa, who analyzed all the ways the legal system favors driving.
The article lists 12 kinds of subsidies identified by Schill, including land use favoring sprawl and tax law subsidizing sprawl, as well as vehicles safety regulations ignoring pedestrians and insurance laws limiting payouts to pedestrians.
Shill is clearly making a point. Schmitt quotes a passage from the paper here:
“Rules from virtually every field of law that codify subsidies for driving, including dangerous driving, should be repealed,” Shill writes. “These laws are not the root cause of automobile supremacy, but they armor it in law and give it agency of its own.”
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