10 ms·

It feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were

It feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed. But the person who stole that technology was indicted and is getting financially destroyed.

jstewartmobile 7y ago
perverse, yet not surprising
throwaway_tech 7y ago
>nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed As noted below Uber settled (that typically means their insurer settled) so there is no need for a civil lawsuit. That is efficiency of the system and how the system is supposed to work. In other words you only bring a suit against the insured if the insurer wrongfully denies your claim, here the insurer paid up, so there is no need for a civil suit by the estate of the deceased against Uber. The criminal side of things is interesting...but for sake of argument lets say you were in an accident, further assume it was your fault, resulting in a fatality. Typically, unless there was a separate crime (e.g. DUI, drag racing, etc...) there will be no criminal charge, just a civil traffic ticket for the accident (in many jurisdictions there will be a specific charge/penalties for an accident resulting in a fatality, but that will still be a traffic ticket, meaning non-criminal). I am curious if the "driver" received a traffic ticket for the accident, my guess is he did, I can't imagine the responding officer(s) not issuing a traffic ticket for an accident much less one resulting in a fatality. Interestingly these traffic tickets for accidents with fatalities do usually carry a potential penalties that include suspension of the drivers license, so I do think the law will need to catch up with reality in that regard because suspending the driver's DL doesn't seem to punish the right party in the case of a self-driving car, so perhaps these states that allow self-driving cars need to think about adopting traffic laws specific to self-driving cars and figure out who those tickets should go to and the proper punishment (obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company).
- stephencanon 7y ago
  > obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company Why not? This (suspending permission to operate on public roads) seems like a perfectly reasonable response to a self-driving car company being negligent.
  - throwaway_tech 7y ago
    As I replied to the first comment asking the same thing, the sentence preceding the statement you quoted explains what needs to be done: >so perhaps these states that allow self-driving cars need to think about adopting traffic laws specific to self-driving cars and figure out who those tickets should go to and the proper punishment Police can't just make up traffic violations that don't currently exist and Courts can't begin dishing out punishments that don't exist for violations that don't exist.
    - stephencanon 7y ago
      Vehicles are certified as safe to operate on public roads by the (federal) government; that certification can be revoked by regulators. Many states have specific laws licensing self-driving cars to operate; the regulators in those states can also revoke permission. There's no need to invent violations.
      - throwaway_tech 7y ago
        >There's no need to invent violations. I think the deceased and their family would disagree. Sure there are existing regulations, but the idea is that as this new technology evolves and is being tested in the field we will find failures and create new regulations to govern. Consider when the horseless carriage began replacing horse and buggy, traffic laws evolved over time as we realized we needed lanes, traffic signals, speed limits, etc... Those laws continue to evolve to this day (ex.: red light cameras, ride-for-hire, etc...), to suggest new laws are not required for driver less vehicles and the current laws are sufficient, especially where we have driver-less vehicle death, suggests a serious disconnect with how law works.
wahern 7y ago
According to Wikipedia, the daughter and husband "quickly reached an undisclosed settlement" with Uber. Uber very likely paid out a large sum.
- dangerface 7y ago
  Sounds reasonable, Why doesn't Anthony Levandowski just do that?
- vanusa 7y ago
  According to Wikipedia, the daughter and husband "quickly reached an undisclosed settlement" with Uber. That's what's called a settlement, a.k.a. hush money. Very, very different from criminal charges.
- cyphar 7y ago
  That covers the civil side of things, but GPs point about criminal charges still applies. Yeah, they might have signed an NDA but I don't think those can restrict what can be uncovered during discovery (but I could be wrong -- IANAL).
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    Sure, but I'm sure some prosecutor took a look at it and decided it wasn't worthwhile. People get killed in accidents all the time, and frequently nobody gets charged with anything. A person being killed in a car accident while jaywalking at night because the driver wasn't paying attention particularly well is a story as old as cars, and usually doesn't result in jail time. Turns out, people are legally allowed to drive while being really shitty drivers, and you mostly can't prosecute people criminally just for being bad at driving. If anyone was going to face criminal charges it would be the driver, and I suppose the relevant prosecutor didn't like the odds.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      "some prosecutor took a look at it and decided it wasn't worthwhile" Probably a prosecutor that works for some local government that could be also be liable for letting Uber operate that car in their jurisdiction. I imagine that discussion happened.
scarejunba 7y ago
They never actually used the stolen tech, right? It wasn't good enough. They hit the pedestrian solely on their own tech, which (clearly, in hindsight) wasn't good enough either.
- MrSandman 7y ago
  It hasn’t even been decided if anything was stolen in the first place. It’s still in court. Only a civil trial has been settled.
- mikejb 7y ago
  It wasn't disclosed on whether stolen IP was used - Uber had (still have?) to cooperate with Waymo, inspecting their hardware and software stack. The pedestrian ultimately got hit because a lot of fallback systems failed: They disabled the software's ability to emergency-break (1), they disabled the cars' systems to emergency break, and the operator of the vehicle was distracted, not reacting in time. (1) This was actually done due to false-positives, i.e. the car slamming on the breaks in non-emergency cases. (I find that's a relevant point, because without that detail it just sounds more ludicrous than it already is).
  - close04 7y ago
    The IP wasn't the problem in the accident, rather the implementation. Simplified, the software was tuned in favor of ignoring obstacles as false positives. By the time the system acknowledged the immediate danger it was too late. No tech, no matter how good the IP, could stand up to being tweaked like this. And the emergency breaking relied on the human operator but the system was not designed to warn the operator.
  - tempestn 7y ago
    You want the car to brake in an emergency, definitely not to break.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

perverse, yet not surprising

throwaway_tech 7y ago

>nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed As noted below Uber settled (that typically means their insurer settled) so there is no need for a civil lawsuit. That is efficiency of the system and how the system is supposed to work. In other words you only bring a suit against the insured if the insurer wrongfully denies your claim, here the insurer paid up, so there is no need for a civil suit by the estate of the deceased against Uber. The criminal side of things is interesting...but for sake of argument lets say you were in an accident, further assume it was your fault, resulting in a fatality. Typically, unless there was a separate crime (e.g. DUI, drag racing, etc...) there will be no criminal charge, just a civil traffic ticket for the accident (in many jurisdictions there will be a specific charge/penalties for an accident resulting in a fatality, but that will still be a traffic ticket, meaning non-criminal). I am curious if the "driver" received a traffic ticket for the accident, my guess is he did, I can't imagine the responding officer(s) not issuing a traffic ticket for an accident much less one resulting in a fatality. Interestingly these traffic tickets for accidents with fatalities do usually carry a potential penalties that include suspension of the drivers license, so I do think the law will need to catch up with reality in that regard because suspending the driver's DL doesn't seem to punish the right party in the case of a self-driving car, so perhaps these states that allow self-driving cars need to think about adopting traffic laws specific to self-driving cars and figure out who those tickets should go to and the proper punishment (obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company).

stephencanon 7y ago
> obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company Why not? This (suspending permission to operate on public roads) seems like a perfectly reasonable response to a self-driving car company being negligent.
- throwaway_tech 7y ago
  As I replied to the first comment asking the same thing, the sentence preceding the statement you quoted explains what needs to be done: >so perhaps these states that allow self-driving cars need to think about adopting traffic laws specific to self-driving cars and figure out who those tickets should go to and the proper punishment Police can't just make up traffic violations that don't currently exist and Courts can't begin dishing out punishments that don't exist for violations that don't exist.
  - stephencanon 7y ago
    Vehicles are certified as safe to operate on public roads by the (federal) government; that certification can be revoked by regulators. Many states have specific laws licensing self-driving cars to operate; the regulators in those states can also revoke permission. There's no need to invent violations.
    - throwaway_tech 7y ago
      >There's no need to invent violations. I think the deceased and their family would disagree. Sure there are existing regulations, but the idea is that as this new technology evolves and is being tested in the field we will find failures and create new regulations to govern. Consider when the horseless carriage began replacing horse and buggy, traffic laws evolved over time as we realized we needed lanes, traffic signals, speed limits, etc... Those laws continue to evolve to this day (ex.: red light cameras, ride-for-hire, etc...), to suggest new laws are not required for driver less vehicles and the current laws are sufficient, especially where we have driver-less vehicle death, suggests a serious disconnect with how law works.

wahern 7y ago

According to Wikipedia, the daughter and husband "quickly reached an undisclosed settlement" with Uber. Uber very likely paid out a large sum.

dangerface 7y ago
Sounds reasonable, Why doesn't Anthony Levandowski just do that?
vanusa 7y ago
According to Wikipedia, the daughter and husband "quickly reached an undisclosed settlement" with Uber. That's what's called a settlement, a.k.a. hush money. Very, very different from criminal charges.
cyphar 7y ago
That covers the civil side of things, but GPs point about criminal charges still applies. Yeah, they might have signed an NDA but I don't think those can restrict what can be uncovered during discovery (but I could be wrong -- IANAL).
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  Sure, but I'm sure some prosecutor took a look at it and decided it wasn't worthwhile. People get killed in accidents all the time, and frequently nobody gets charged with anything. A person being killed in a car accident while jaywalking at night because the driver wasn't paying attention particularly well is a story as old as cars, and usually doesn't result in jail time. Turns out, people are legally allowed to drive while being really shitty drivers, and you mostly can't prosecute people criminally just for being bad at driving. If anyone was going to face criminal charges it would be the driver, and I suppose the relevant prosecutor didn't like the odds.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    "some prosecutor took a look at it and decided it wasn't worthwhile" Probably a prosecutor that works for some local government that could be also be liable for letting Uber operate that car in their jurisdiction. I imagine that discussion happened.

scarejunba 7y ago

They never actually used the stolen tech, right? It wasn't good enough. They hit the pedestrian solely on their own tech, which (clearly, in hindsight) wasn't good enough either.

MrSandman 7y ago
It hasn’t even been decided if anything was stolen in the first place. It’s still in court. Only a civil trial has been settled.
mikejb 7y ago
It wasn't disclosed on whether stolen IP was used - Uber had (still have?) to cooperate with Waymo, inspecting their hardware and software stack. The pedestrian ultimately got hit because a lot of fallback systems failed: They disabled the software's ability to emergency-break (1), they disabled the cars' systems to emergency break, and the operator of the vehicle was distracted, not reacting in time. (1) This was actually done due to false-positives, i.e. the car slamming on the breaks in non-emergency cases. (I find that's a relevant point, because without that detail it just sounds more ludicrous than it already is).
- close04 7y ago
  The IP wasn't the problem in the accident, rather the implementation. Simplified, the software was tuned in favor of ignoring obstacles as false positives. By the time the system acknowledged the immediate danger it was too late. No tech, no matter how good the IP, could stand up to being tweaked like this. And the emergency breaking relied on the human operator but the system was not designed to warn the operator.
- tempestn 7y ago
  You want the car to brake in an emergency, definitely not to break.