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Genius? If you hurt someone on the road by doing something explicitly illegal which you have been explicitly warned against doing, you are looking at massive fi
by cjensen 10y ago
Genius? If you hurt someone on the road by doing something explicitly illegal which you have been explicitly warned against doing, you are looking at massive financial liability to victims and potential involuntary manslaughter charges against executives.
TechCrunch's suggestion that this is the thin edge of a wedge to get to do self-driving without regulation is preposterous. There is no future reality in which the Department of Transportation does not strictly regulate self-driving vehicles.
- Kiro 10y agoIt's about the public's perception as well though.
- sharemywin 10y agoAlthough to me there's a big difference between "innovating" on bureaucracy and ignoring "public safety"
- rhino369 10y agoYea the laws uber broke were mostly bad regulations that nobody cared about and ultimately didn't harm anyone (other than in a competition harms incumbents). But beta testing their cars on real streets could lead to disaster. Even from a non-legal PR risk perspective, it's dicey. If one of these things runs over a cute kid, the attempt to skirt the law will backfire. That said challenging the law isn't necessarily skirting the law, but that's how techcrunch is portraying it. I'm too lazy to read the docket of the case.
- Animats 10y agoLike minimum wage laws. Right.
- icebraining 10y agoThere they just followed the existing model of taxis.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoOr proper insurance.
- creaghpatr 10y agoPlus, not all penalties are necessarily financial. Given that Uber is perceived as a symbol of 'Silicon Valley greed' to some politicians/constituents, a few high profile accidents would present a witch hunt opportunity for someone. Not sure how much practical damage politicians could do but at a $50B-ish valuation there's little room for fatal error. Even a 1-2 year delay in getting self-drivers on the road would cost Uber billions.
- MBCook 10y agoPublic perception: In the first day their cars were caught running red lights on film. Either the cars are faulty, or cars and the human drivers for 'just in case' are faulty. Oh, yeah, they've been turning across bike lanes illegally too, the kind of turn that causes most bike accidents with cars in California. They were told about this problem before launch and LAUNCHED ANYWAY. That's another thing they've asked their human drivers to take over for (you know, the ones who ran the light). Honestly, if someone's job is to sit in an Uber for 6 hours and watch for the car to make a driving mistake... that's a lot of fatigue. They're going to get comfortable and miss A LOT of stuff. Uber needs a huge slap for this whole thing. They're being very reckless.
- sharemywin 10y agoI can't believe they can find engineers that want to "drive" the car.
- dhimes 10y agoYeah, either Techcrunch doesn't understand this or I don't.