7 ms·

This isn't about building codes. It's about stickers and permits. An independent inspector said that it was built twice as strong as a regular house. The inspec

This isn't about building codes. It's about stickers and permits. An independent inspector said that it was built twice as strong as a regular house. The inspector was just throwing the book at the person because it didn't follow his bureaucracy. It's the same thing that Uber was doing with the self-driving car permit, if you actually pay attention to the details. Neither are less safe, it's just that both didn't kiss the ring of the bureaucracy and the civil servants didn't like it.

ajamesm 10y ago
the Uber permit was a story because it WASN'T safe; it got in the news for running red lights.
- stale2002 10y ago
  Tesla's automated cruise control would run a red light as well. The law on this was clear. If you have a human at the wheel, you can have whatever technology you want doing "lane assist" and automated cruise control. If Tesla is legal, than so is Uber.
  - ajamesm 10y ago
    'legality' isn't the issue, it was Uber refusing to acquire the associated permitting.
    - stale2002 10y ago
      You do not have to get a permit for lane assist technology. Tesla's cars that you can buy right now have lane assist and nobody owns any permits. If there is a human at the wheel, no permit required.
      - nommm-nommm 10y ago
        The California DMV disagrees with you... And they revoked the registration plates for their 16 cars. https://consumerist.com/2016/12/22/uber-packs-up-its-self-driving-cars-and-takes-them-to-play-in-arizona/ https://consumerist.com/2016/12/22/uber-packs-up-its-self-dr...
        stale2002 10y ago
        Yes they do. A politician that had no problem with what the private company was doing for months, became mad at the private company as soon as there were political consequences (and not a moment sooner!). It is unsurprising to me that a politician cares about politics and doesn't give a shit about the law. And as soon as this stuff went to court the politician would have lost, because the law is very clear on this. But it would have delayed things for a year or 2. And Uber was perfectly able to just move to Arizona. But it is no matter. Eventually this stuff will go to court and the politician who doesn't care about the law will lose.
        nommm-nommm 10y ago
        Since when is the DMV "a politician?"
        kelnos 10y ago
        The Director of the CA DMV is a position appointed by the Governor. While it's not an elected position, that certainly qualifies as a political office. The DMV itself may not be a politician, but it's made up of people that happen to have a politician as their boss.
      - ajamesm 10y ago
        I believe that "no permit required" is for the permit office and the legislature to decide... Looking through your comment history, it looks like you have a very strong attachment to Uber! Strong to the point that you have to create alternate definitions of commonly-held terms in response to criticism of the company. Any reason?
        stale2002 10y ago
        My reason is that I hate politicians who don't care about the law, and delay perfectly legal technologies that are going to save millions of lives. Every year, a hundred thousand people in the world die in car related incidents. Every last one of these deaths are preventable. And every year that politicians delay this technology, is 100 thousand more people dead that could have been saved. They delay it even when it clearly doesn't break the law. The laws on lane assist and cruise control are clear. This stuff is already deployed to tens of thousands of Tesla cars, that are on the road right now. I do not work for Uber, if that is what you are insinuating (although I have received recruiting emails, as I am a SF web developer. I don't really like their intense work environment.). I "merely" care a lot about the 100 thousand people that politicians, ignorant of the law, are killing every year.
        ajamesm 10y ago
        If 100k lives are at stake, then a $175 permit is the kind of pocket change you can work out after the fact, not a reason to uproot and relocate. The argument is disingenuous on its face.
        employee8000 10y ago
        (Uber employee) Read the story, not the headlines. The $175 permit only required verified insurance and training for the drivers. That's it. It wasn't a safety inspection at all. They didn't ensure that the cars were safe. It was simply bureaucracy. Plus, based on the actual law written, Uber's implementation wasn't covered under the permit. Uber has hundreds of lawyers, I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing. Why should they get a permit that they don't need to?
- employee8000 10y ago
  Read the story, not the headlines. It was a human driver, not the car, that ran the red light.
x0x0 10y ago
Except the bit where self-driving ubers were running lights and driving unsafely.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>It's the same thing that Uber was doing with the self-driving car permit, if you actually pay attention to the details. Neither are less safe, it's just that both didn't kiss the ring of the bureaucracy and the civil servants didn't like it. This is ridiculous. Uber's self-driving cars have run red lights on at least one occasion[1]. Their technology is quite far behind that of Google and others. Furthermore, the permit in question is both very easy and cheap to attain. We aren't talking about years of bureaucratic process. The most likely reason Uber has refused to attain permits is because doing so would require disclosing accidents. [1]http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/14/13960836/uber-self-driving-car-san-francisco-red-light-safety http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/14/13960836/uber-self-drivin...
- aianus 10y ago
  > Furthermore, the permit in question is both very easy and cheap to attain. We aren't talking about years of bureaucratic process. If true, then the permits are worthless. > The most likely reason Uber has refused to attain permits is because doing so would require disclosing accidents. Don't accidents (self-driving or otherwise) already need to be reported to the police in California? They sure do in my jurisdiction.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    ... disclosed as self-driving car accidents. They're pursuing self-driving tech in a shifty way - paying a driver to perform backup (in a way that Google has shown can't be done) and otherwise letting an unfinished AI have full-control of the vehicle at road speeds. When the cars make a mistake (run a red) they blame the driver so they can claim a flawless self-driving record. If they said they were self-driving, and got the permit, they'd be required to log activations so we'd know who was supposed to be in control at the time.
    - stale2002 10y ago
      They aren't self driving though. The law is clear. If you have a human at the wheel, it is lane assist, and automated cruise control. If you don't like it, then change the law.
spitfire 10y ago
No Über/lyft (and airbnb, et al) are doing something different. Regulatory arbitrage - Purposely breaking the law in order to have a structural advantage over competitors. This guy didn't want others to play by one set of rules while he played by another (advantageous) set.
- wyager 10y ago
  > Purposely breaking the law in order to have a structural advantage over competitors. Not one of the the groups you mentioned makes a habit of breaking the law. They look for opportunities to get around the excessive weight of our insanely litigious and complicated regulatory environment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. They are helping humanity escape the productivity sink of pointless regulations, set insanely far along the diminishing returns curve. Think about how many billions of dollars of productive output are wasted every year so some idiot pencil-pushers can make sure the correct stickers are present on building materials.
- Hondor 10y ago
  Doesn't regulatory arbitrage mean following the regulations but taking advantage of loopholes in them? So it's not illegal. That seems a bit different from breaking them, possibly paying a fine, and still profiting anyway. The latter is what I've heard of Uber doing in some cases. It's also what shops do by trading on holidays where they're supposed to be closed.
  - 15thandwhatever 10y ago
    Correct. Regulatory arbitrage is about finding and taking advantage of loopholes, and shifting business activities to other business units (or even locations) where while those actions are technically legal, they're very, very borderline. Then you generally couple regulatory arbitrage with money spent on lawyers and lobbying to monitor the existing loopholes, in order to make sure they don't disappear. What Uber/Lyft are doing is more equivalent to poker: a combination of betting (a large enough war chest to pay lawyers and fines) and bluffing (using marketing campaigns to garner public interest and shame/scare the establishment). When the stakes get too high (e.g. ride sharing laws in Austin, TX), they fold.
MustardTiger 10y ago
>This isn't about building codes. It's about stickers and permits That is the building code. It is all about stickers and stamps. Why is a tree that grew on my land that I cut myself not acceptable? It has nothing to do with the wood obviously, it has to do with creating make work jobs for bureaucrats to "inspect" and stamp lumber.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  actually. Depending on a lot of circumstances, it may not actually be acceptable :) That is why these grading standards exist in the first place. They were done due to failures, not because government was bored.
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    No, they were done because of lobbying from the lumber industry. If you have any evidence that stamped lumber is superior in any way I would love to see it. Because if you've ever built a house, you'd know you have to throw away about 10% of stamped lumber because it is trash.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      "No, they were done because of lobbying from the lumber industry. " This is simply false. Seriously. I'd love to see where this history came from? Do you have any real source, or is this typical "lobbyists did it" bluster. Here is the history of stamping in the US: There were failures and complaints in ~1920's from mills/etc starting to sell substandard lumber due to the depression. Code enforcers wanted a sane way to ensure the houses being built weren't being built with substandard lumber. Folks asked Dept of Commerce to come up with voluntary standards for grading and inspection. NIST (well, what is now NIST) created a set of simple voluntary grading standards. They've revised it a few times. Literally the only thing the grading agencies do is grade. They don't actually care about the end result. They don't make more or less money one way or the other. The grading standards are also pretty simple. It's not like it's rocket science. Note that most mills stamp their own lumber. You just have to have someone trained to do it. In wisconsin, for example, it takes 1 day to be certified. One of the 7 grading agencies randomly inspect, and if they find enough errors, they'll hold you up. As for the amount of waste, most waste i've seen is from 1. later-bent studs due to wood movement. This is not structurally unsound (just nobody feels like re-straightening them), so the stamp still is doing it's job of saying it's sound. 2. damage during transit. Your other question was "evidence stamped lumber is superior in any way". okay. that's easy. Two grading methods include machine stress rating and non-destructive evaluation. See http://www.southernpine.com/grade-methods/ http://www.southernpine.com/grade-methods/ for example. I will strongly assert that lumber machine tested and evaluated for actual strength and stamped as such is superior to random lumber that is untested and unknown. Visually graded lumber is usually graded based on things like knot size and slope of grain, both of which have a significant structural effect on lumber (structural strength decreases as grain deviation increases). Assuming grading is being done properly (and again, there's a lot of checks going on), yes, the lumber is structurally better. But maybe you don't believe the physics, and think that things like slope of grain don't impact the structural properties? If so, i guess i can't solve that problem for you. It's pretty well studied: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/390291/Sloping-Grain-and-the-Strength-of-Structural-Timber-A-Selective-Annotated-Bibliography.pdf http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/390291... has a bibliography Also note the table showing that wood with significant slope of grain will support half or less of what wood without significant slope of grain would. See also http://www.conradfp.com/pdf/ch4-Mechanical-Properties-of-Wood.pdf http://www.conradfp.com/pdf/ch4-Mechanical-Properties-of-Woo... and "Failure Analysis of Wood and Wood-Based Products" https://www.accessengineeringlibrary.com/browse/failure-analysis-of-wood-and-wood-based-products https://www.accessengineeringlibrary.com/browse/failure-anal...
ryandrake 10y ago
Bingo. This is about bureaucrats stamping papers and money going to approved vendors. Not about safety. Reminds me of what I had to do with my car when I moved to California due to "emissions" regulations. CA emissions meant that even if performing as it did 30 years ago as a new car, it would not have been legal, since they keep raising standards year after year to the point where the car, as built, was illegal. After doing significant repair work (myself), it exceeded California's strict requirements. By the numbers it blew clean as a whistle, better than stock. But I used [cue the scary music] after-market parts (!) that did not bear the great stamp of California, and therefore failed emissions anyway as "tampered". Ended up having to sell it to someone out of state because California wouldn't budge on the stamps and bureaucracy. I feel for this guy. Regulations and codes should serve some identifiable overall good. It shouldn't be simply about compliance and getting the right stamps on the right papers.
clarkmoody 10y ago
Multiply the simple act of kissing the bureaucrat's ring a million fold and you get secular stagnation in the economy. Every small decision by entrepreneurs of whether to try that new product must be weighed against the bureaucratic burden. Every new "common sense" rule comes with permanent costs. Each time a regulator has latitude to determine whether you can move forward with your project -- as opposed to a strict rule book with concrete requirements -- that regulator is susceptible to corruption and political retaliation. When the needle starts to tip toward entrepreneurs not taking the risk, then you get stagnation. The bureaucracy will slowly strangle the vibrant economy to death.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  One side of the problem is that "strict rule book with concrete requirements" translate into stamps for quality certification and plenty of dumb rule following.
  - clarkmoody 10y ago
    Of course. But the alternative of rules that are open to interpretation is worse. If there must be rules, let them be clear and concrete.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Taken to an extreme, clear rules not open to interpretation lead exactly to the crazy situation you can read on the article.

ajamesm 10y ago

the Uber permit was a story because it WASN'T safe; it got in the news for running red lights.

stale2002 10y ago
Tesla's automated cruise control would run a red light as well. The law on this was clear. If you have a human at the wheel, you can have whatever technology you want doing "lane assist" and automated cruise control. If Tesla is legal, than so is Uber.
- ajamesm 10y ago
  'legality' isn't the issue, it was Uber refusing to acquire the associated permitting.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    You do not have to get a permit for lane assist technology. Tesla's cars that you can buy right now have lane assist and nobody owns any permits. If there is a human at the wheel, no permit required.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      The California DMV disagrees with you... And they revoked the registration plates for their 16 cars. https://consumerist.com/2016/12/22/uber-packs-up-its-self-driving-cars-and-takes-them-to-play-in-arizona/ https://consumerist.com/2016/12/22/uber-packs-up-its-self-dr...
      - stale2002 10y ago
        Yes they do. A politician that had no problem with what the private company was doing for months, became mad at the private company as soon as there were political consequences (and not a moment sooner!). It is unsurprising to me that a politician cares about politics and doesn't give a shit about the law. And as soon as this stuff went to court the politician would have lost, because the law is very clear on this. But it would have delayed things for a year or 2. And Uber was perfectly able to just move to Arizona. But it is no matter. Eventually this stuff will go to court and the politician who doesn't care about the law will lose.
        nommm-nommm 10y ago
        Since when is the DMV "a politician?"
        kelnos 10y ago
        The Director of the CA DMV is a position appointed by the Governor. While it's not an elected position, that certainly qualifies as a political office. The DMV itself may not be a politician, but it's made up of people that happen to have a politician as their boss.
    - ajamesm 10y ago
      I believe that "no permit required" is for the permit office and the legislature to decide... Looking through your comment history, it looks like you have a very strong attachment to Uber! Strong to the point that you have to create alternate definitions of commonly-held terms in response to criticism of the company. Any reason?
      - stale2002 10y ago
        My reason is that I hate politicians who don't care about the law, and delay perfectly legal technologies that are going to save millions of lives. Every year, a hundred thousand people in the world die in car related incidents. Every last one of these deaths are preventable. And every year that politicians delay this technology, is 100 thousand more people dead that could have been saved. They delay it even when it clearly doesn't break the law. The laws on lane assist and cruise control are clear. This stuff is already deployed to tens of thousands of Tesla cars, that are on the road right now. I do not work for Uber, if that is what you are insinuating (although I have received recruiting emails, as I am a SF web developer. I don't really like their intense work environment.). I "merely" care a lot about the 100 thousand people that politicians, ignorant of the law, are killing every year.
        ajamesm 10y ago
        If 100k lives are at stake, then a $175 permit is the kind of pocket change you can work out after the fact, not a reason to uproot and relocate. The argument is disingenuous on its face.
        employee8000 10y ago
        (Uber employee) Read the story, not the headlines. The $175 permit only required verified insurance and training for the drivers. That's it. It wasn't a safety inspection at all. They didn't ensure that the cars were safe. It was simply bureaucracy. Plus, based on the actual law written, Uber's implementation wasn't covered under the permit. Uber has hundreds of lawyers, I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing. Why should they get a permit that they don't need to?
employee8000 10y ago
Read the story, not the headlines. It was a human driver, not the car, that ran the red light.

x0x0 10y ago

Except the bit where self-driving ubers were running lights and driving unsafely.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>It's the same thing that Uber was doing with the self-driving car permit, if you actually pay attention to the details. Neither are less safe, it's just that both didn't kiss the ring of the bureaucracy and the civil servants didn't like it. This is ridiculous. Uber's self-driving cars have run red lights on at least one occasion[1]. Their technology is quite far behind that of Google and others. Furthermore, the permit in question is both very easy and cheap to attain. We aren't talking about years of bureaucratic process. The most likely reason Uber has refused to attain permits is because doing so would require disclosing accidents. [1]http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/14/13960836/uber-self-driving-car-san-francisco-red-light-safety http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/14/13960836/uber-self-drivin...

aianus 10y ago
> Furthermore, the permit in question is both very easy and cheap to attain. We aren't talking about years of bureaucratic process. If true, then the permits are worthless. > The most likely reason Uber has refused to attain permits is because doing so would require disclosing accidents. Don't accidents (self-driving or otherwise) already need to be reported to the police in California? They sure do in my jurisdiction.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  ... disclosed as self-driving car accidents. They're pursuing self-driving tech in a shifty way - paying a driver to perform backup (in a way that Google has shown can't be done) and otherwise letting an unfinished AI have full-control of the vehicle at road speeds. When the cars make a mistake (run a red) they blame the driver so they can claim a flawless self-driving record. If they said they were self-driving, and got the permit, they'd be required to log activations so we'd know who was supposed to be in control at the time.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    They aren't self driving though. The law is clear. If you have a human at the wheel, it is lane assist, and automated cruise control. If you don't like it, then change the law.

spitfire 10y ago

No Über/lyft (and airbnb, et al) are doing something different. Regulatory arbitrage - Purposely breaking the law in order to have a structural advantage over competitors. This guy didn't want others to play by one set of rules while he played by another (advantageous) set.

wyager 10y ago
> Purposely breaking the law in order to have a structural advantage over competitors. Not one of the the groups you mentioned makes a habit of breaking the law. They look for opportunities to get around the excessive weight of our insanely litigious and complicated regulatory environment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. They are helping humanity escape the productivity sink of pointless regulations, set insanely far along the diminishing returns curve. Think about how many billions of dollars of productive output are wasted every year so some idiot pencil-pushers can make sure the correct stickers are present on building materials.
Hondor 10y ago
Doesn't regulatory arbitrage mean following the regulations but taking advantage of loopholes in them? So it's not illegal. That seems a bit different from breaking them, possibly paying a fine, and still profiting anyway. The latter is what I've heard of Uber doing in some cases. It's also what shops do by trading on holidays where they're supposed to be closed.
- 15thandwhatever 10y ago
  Correct. Regulatory arbitrage is about finding and taking advantage of loopholes, and shifting business activities to other business units (or even locations) where while those actions are technically legal, they're very, very borderline. Then you generally couple regulatory arbitrage with money spent on lawyers and lobbying to monitor the existing loopholes, in order to make sure they don't disappear. What Uber/Lyft are doing is more equivalent to poker: a combination of betting (a large enough war chest to pay lawyers and fines) and bluffing (using marketing campaigns to garner public interest and shame/scare the establishment). When the stakes get too high (e.g. ride sharing laws in Austin, TX), they fold.

MustardTiger 10y ago

>This isn't about building codes. It's about stickers and permits That is the building code. It is all about stickers and stamps. Why is a tree that grew on my land that I cut myself not acceptable? It has nothing to do with the wood obviously, it has to do with creating make work jobs for bureaucrats to "inspect" and stamp lumber.

DannyBee 10y ago
actually. Depending on a lot of circumstances, it may not actually be acceptable :) That is why these grading standards exist in the first place. They were done due to failures, not because government was bored.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  No, they were done because of lobbying from the lumber industry. If you have any evidence that stamped lumber is superior in any way I would love to see it. Because if you've ever built a house, you'd know you have to throw away about 10% of stamped lumber because it is trash.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "No, they were done because of lobbying from the lumber industry. " This is simply false. Seriously. I'd love to see where this history came from? Do you have any real source, or is this typical "lobbyists did it" bluster. Here is the history of stamping in the US: There were failures and complaints in ~1920's from mills/etc starting to sell substandard lumber due to the depression. Code enforcers wanted a sane way to ensure the houses being built weren't being built with substandard lumber. Folks asked Dept of Commerce to come up with voluntary standards for grading and inspection. NIST (well, what is now NIST) created a set of simple voluntary grading standards. They've revised it a few times. Literally the only thing the grading agencies do is grade. They don't actually care about the end result. They don't make more or less money one way or the other. The grading standards are also pretty simple. It's not like it's rocket science. Note that most mills stamp their own lumber. You just have to have someone trained to do it. In wisconsin, for example, it takes 1 day to be certified. One of the 7 grading agencies randomly inspect, and if they find enough errors, they'll hold you up. As for the amount of waste, most waste i've seen is from 1. later-bent studs due to wood movement. This is not structurally unsound (just nobody feels like re-straightening them), so the stamp still is doing it's job of saying it's sound. 2. damage during transit. Your other question was "evidence stamped lumber is superior in any way". okay. that's easy. Two grading methods include machine stress rating and non-destructive evaluation. See http://www.southernpine.com/grade-methods/ http://www.southernpine.com/grade-methods/ for example. I will strongly assert that lumber machine tested and evaluated for actual strength and stamped as such is superior to random lumber that is untested and unknown. Visually graded lumber is usually graded based on things like knot size and slope of grain, both of which have a significant structural effect on lumber (structural strength decreases as grain deviation increases). Assuming grading is being done properly (and again, there's a lot of checks going on), yes, the lumber is structurally better. But maybe you don't believe the physics, and think that things like slope of grain don't impact the structural properties? If so, i guess i can't solve that problem for you. It's pretty well studied: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/390291/Sloping-Grain-and-the-Strength-of-Structural-Timber-A-Selective-Annotated-Bibliography.pdf http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/390291... has a bibliography Also note the table showing that wood with significant slope of grain will support half or less of what wood without significant slope of grain would. See also http://www.conradfp.com/pdf/ch4-Mechanical-Properties-of-Wood.pdf http://www.conradfp.com/pdf/ch4-Mechanical-Properties-of-Woo... and "Failure Analysis of Wood and Wood-Based Products" https://www.accessengineeringlibrary.com/browse/failure-analysis-of-wood-and-wood-based-products https://www.accessengineeringlibrary.com/browse/failure-anal...

ryandrake 10y ago

Bingo. This is about bureaucrats stamping papers and money going to approved vendors. Not about safety. Reminds me of what I had to do with my car when I moved to California due to "emissions" regulations. CA emissions meant that even if performing as it did 30 years ago as a new car, it would not have been legal, since they keep raising standards year after year to the point where the car, as built, was illegal. After doing significant repair work (myself), it exceeded California's strict requirements. By the numbers it blew clean as a whistle, better than stock. But I used [cue the scary music] after-market parts (!) that did not bear the great stamp of California, and therefore failed emissions anyway as "tampered". Ended up having to sell it to someone out of state because California wouldn't budge on the stamps and bureaucracy. I feel for this guy. Regulations and codes should serve some identifiable overall good. It shouldn't be simply about compliance and getting the right stamps on the right papers.

clarkmoody 10y ago

Multiply the simple act of kissing the bureaucrat's ring a million fold and you get secular stagnation in the economy. Every small decision by entrepreneurs of whether to try that new product must be weighed against the bureaucratic burden. Every new "common sense" rule comes with permanent costs. Each time a regulator has latitude to determine whether you can move forward with your project -- as opposed to a strict rule book with concrete requirements -- that regulator is susceptible to corruption and political retaliation. When the needle starts to tip toward entrepreneurs not taking the risk, then you get stagnation. The bureaucracy will slowly strangle the vibrant economy to death.

marcosdumay 10y ago
One side of the problem is that "strict rule book with concrete requirements" translate into stamps for quality certification and plenty of dumb rule following.
- clarkmoody 10y ago
  Of course. But the alternative of rules that are open to interpretation is worse. If there must be rules, let them be clear and concrete.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Taken to an extreme, clear rules not open to interpretation lead exactly to the crazy situation you can read on the article.