5 ms·

Even if it was broad daylight, it still would be unlikely that the driver would have been charged. Read the section on "duty of care" here: https://www.jackson

by rsj_hn 8y ago

Even if it was broad daylight, it still would be unlikely that the driver would have been charged. Read the section on "duty of care" here: https://www.jacksonwhitelaw.com/az-personal-injury/auto-pedestrian-accidents/ https://www.jacksonwhitelaw.com/az-personal-injury/auto-pede... and note that drivers only have a duty of care to yield to pedestrians who have the right of way. Pedestrians jaywalking never have the right of way. They are only allowed to cross at intersections. Drivers do not have a duty of care to yield to pedestrians who do not have the right of way, although drivers have other duties.

masklinn 8y ago
> Even if it was broad daylight, it still would be unlikely that the driver would have been charged. I'm not arguing that the driver should have been charged at any point. I didn't do so even back when the event happened.
- rsj_hn 8y ago
  Here, I'm using "driver" as a proxy for Uber as the entity controlling the car, not the person sitting in the driver's seat, who was apparently reading. Sorry for the ambiguity. E.g. if a human was driving the car and the car did the exact same thing, as the Uber car did, but it was broad daylight, then they still most likely would not be charged. If you jaywalk and get killed, it's basically your fault, and the only exception would be if the driver was drunk, or speeding, or not obeying traffic signs, etc. Jaywalkers don't have the right of way, and cars are not obligated to yield to pedestrians who don't have the right of way.
  - atoav 8y ago
    In Germany you have to stop when you see somebody on the street, independent of their right to be there in the first place and independend of the fact how many laws they are breaking with it. You have to stop unless say, it is impossible for you to do so because they were jumping on the street suddenly or it is plausible that you didn’t see them. This is because a persons right to be alive outweighs your right of way at any time and it is none of your business whether that other person acts lawful or not. Interesting to see how much this general principles differ.
    - rsj_hn 8y ago
      I think we all agree that there is a moral imperative to stop. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the law should try to perfectly reflect that moral imperative. Laws generally don't work well when they attempt a high resolution of morality, because the law can only approximate justice, and the more complex the approximation, the more arbitrary and ambiguous the law becomes, which is itself unjust. The specific problem here is who decides whether the driver did "enough"? The driver can say "If I tried to slam on the brakes, I was afraid my car would spin out of control" or "If I tried to swerve away, I was afraid I might collide with someone". They might say "I thought there was a car behind me, and if I hit the brakes, I would injure that person. It was an honest mistake that the car which used to be behind was no longer there." Etc. Then you have to decide whether you believe them. In an environment where someone is innocent and must be proven guilty, you don't get a whole lot more precision by adding more precision to the law. Or do you drop the requirement of presumption of innocence? Also, that leaves a lot of discretion to the prosecutor, which may be abused, or imposed arbitrarily, and is ambiguous. So you are creating a lot of ambiguity in the law in an effort to precisely match the moral outcome. The other option is to have clear responsibilities. The pedestrian must do X. The driver must do Y. If the driver does Y, he is not charged. When both X and Y are followed, there can be no accident. But "Must do all you can" is not clearly defined. "Not speeding, obeying traffic signs" -- this is more clearly defined. So in AZ, the law is a little more clear, but at the expense of not being as morally precise. It's a reasonable trade off. It may suffer from an abstract moral critique, but I'm not sure on balance it delivers less justice.
      - purple_ducks 8y ago
        I thought it would have been a much simpler case of "Driving without due care and attention" of which both Uber and the human driver were guilty of.
        rsj_hn 8y ago
        But you need to define "due care". I gave a summary of the AZ definition of the due care that applied to both drivers and pedestrians. E.g. pedestrian has to make sure to cross at cross walks, driver has to obey traffic signs and yield to those with right of way, etc. If you use a circular definition of "due care" and make it something like "due care means you must take all action that is reasonable to avoid an accident" you've again ducked the issue of giving due care a well defined meaning.
lozenge 8y ago
The driver was watching TV on her phone. She might still be charged. You're right that the bullet point list in your link doesn't have anything that applies to uber, but there is no carve out in the negligent homicide law that says running over jaywalkers is legal. The prosecutor could have looked at: * whether Uber was warned that having one operator instead of two would be unsafe (they were) * whether having one operator to monitor the road and the software is inherently unsafe * whether operators were told that the system would never emergency brake and never warn about needing to brake * whether Uber reviewed footage to ensure operators were paying attention, whether they knew that operators weren't paying attention etc I hope all of this will be in the NTSB report.
- masklinn 8y ago
  > The driver was watching TV on her phone. She might still be charged. Has that been conclusively established, rather than they were watching the central console where the automation they were also supposed to oversee is located?
  - danielvf 8y ago
    Yes, it was in the official police report. The driver was watching "The Voice" on Hulu at the time, and "...looked up just 0.5 seconds before the crash, after keeping her head down for 5.3 seconds while going 44 miles an hour".
boomlinde 8y ago
I don't know AZ law, but doesn't the driver have a duty to use a reasonable level of caution to avoid hurting others, regardless of who has the right of way? For example, looking at the road while driving might be within reasonable levels of caution. Where I'm at (Sweden, so far away and possibly a very different legal situation), right of way is not an excuse for negligent driving. You don't get to run people over unpunished just because you have the right of way if it could have been prevented by paying proper attention.
megous 8y ago
> Drivers do not have a duty of care to yield to pedestrians who do not have the right of way, although drivers have other duties. That's not what's written there at all.

by rsj_hn 8y ago

masklinn 8y ago

> Even if it was broad daylight, it still would be unlikely that the driver would have been charged. I'm not arguing that the driver should have been charged at any point. I didn't do so even back when the event happened.

rsj_hn 8y ago
Here, I'm using "driver" as a proxy for Uber as the entity controlling the car, not the person sitting in the driver's seat, who was apparently reading. Sorry for the ambiguity. E.g. if a human was driving the car and the car did the exact same thing, as the Uber car did, but it was broad daylight, then they still most likely would not be charged. If you jaywalk and get killed, it's basically your fault, and the only exception would be if the driver was drunk, or speeding, or not obeying traffic signs, etc. Jaywalkers don't have the right of way, and cars are not obligated to yield to pedestrians who don't have the right of way.
- atoav 8y ago
  In Germany you have to stop when you see somebody on the street, independent of their right to be there in the first place and independend of the fact how many laws they are breaking with it. You have to stop unless say, it is impossible for you to do so because they were jumping on the street suddenly or it is plausible that you didn’t see them. This is because a persons right to be alive outweighs your right of way at any time and it is none of your business whether that other person acts lawful or not. Interesting to see how much this general principles differ.
  - rsj_hn 8y ago
    I think we all agree that there is a moral imperative to stop. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the law should try to perfectly reflect that moral imperative. Laws generally don't work well when they attempt a high resolution of morality, because the law can only approximate justice, and the more complex the approximation, the more arbitrary and ambiguous the law becomes, which is itself unjust. The specific problem here is who decides whether the driver did "enough"? The driver can say "If I tried to slam on the brakes, I was afraid my car would spin out of control" or "If I tried to swerve away, I was afraid I might collide with someone". They might say "I thought there was a car behind me, and if I hit the brakes, I would injure that person. It was an honest mistake that the car which used to be behind was no longer there." Etc. Then you have to decide whether you believe them. In an environment where someone is innocent and must be proven guilty, you don't get a whole lot more precision by adding more precision to the law. Or do you drop the requirement of presumption of innocence? Also, that leaves a lot of discretion to the prosecutor, which may be abused, or imposed arbitrarily, and is ambiguous. So you are creating a lot of ambiguity in the law in an effort to precisely match the moral outcome. The other option is to have clear responsibilities. The pedestrian must do X. The driver must do Y. If the driver does Y, he is not charged. When both X and Y are followed, there can be no accident. But "Must do all you can" is not clearly defined. "Not speeding, obeying traffic signs" -- this is more clearly defined. So in AZ, the law is a little more clear, but at the expense of not being as morally precise. It's a reasonable trade off. It may suffer from an abstract moral critique, but I'm not sure on balance it delivers less justice.
    - purple_ducks 8y ago
      I thought it would have been a much simpler case of "Driving without due care and attention" of which both Uber and the human driver were guilty of.
      - rsj_hn 8y ago
        But you need to define "due care". I gave a summary of the AZ definition of the due care that applied to both drivers and pedestrians. E.g. pedestrian has to make sure to cross at cross walks, driver has to obey traffic signs and yield to those with right of way, etc. If you use a circular definition of "due care" and make it something like "due care means you must take all action that is reasonable to avoid an accident" you've again ducked the issue of giving due care a well defined meaning.

lozenge 8y ago

The driver was watching TV on her phone. She might still be charged. You're right that the bullet point list in your link doesn't have anything that applies to uber, but there is no carve out in the negligent homicide law that says running over jaywalkers is legal. The prosecutor could have looked at: * whether Uber was warned that having one operator instead of two would be unsafe (they were) * whether having one operator to monitor the road and the software is inherently unsafe * whether operators were told that the system would never emergency brake and never warn about needing to brake * whether Uber reviewed footage to ensure operators were paying attention, whether they knew that operators weren't paying attention etc I hope all of this will be in the NTSB report.

masklinn 8y ago
> The driver was watching TV on her phone. She might still be charged. Has that been conclusively established, rather than they were watching the central console where the automation they were also supposed to oversee is located?
- danielvf 8y ago
  Yes, it was in the official police report. The driver was watching "The Voice" on Hulu at the time, and "...looked up just 0.5 seconds before the crash, after keeping her head down for 5.3 seconds while going 44 miles an hour".

boomlinde 8y ago

I don't know AZ law, but doesn't the driver have a duty to use a reasonable level of caution to avoid hurting others, regardless of who has the right of way? For example, looking at the road while driving might be within reasonable levels of caution. Where I'm at (Sweden, so far away and possibly a very different legal situation), right of way is not an excuse for negligent driving. You don't get to run people over unpunished just because you have the right of way if it could have been prevented by paying proper attention.

megous 8y ago

> Drivers do not have a duty of care to yield to pedestrians who do not have the right of way, although drivers have other duties. That's not what's written there at all.