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> Stone rejected Uber's argument that it is "merely a technology company" connecting riders with drivers, finding that Uber provides transportation services to

• xhkkffbf 12d ago
  The bad guy here is the driver. Could Uber have done more? That's what the arbitrators concluded. But the reality is that this is a victory for the driverless cars (Waymo, Tesla, etc.). If you want to force Uber to take responsibility for the driver, the simplest thing is to get rid of the driver.
  • applfanboysbgon 12d ago
    Do you expect that Waymo will not take responsibility for the driverless car?
  • pixl97 12d ago
    There was no world in which driverless cars weren't the eventual outcome anyway. And, it's not exactly taking responsibility for the driver. It's taking responsibility for the safety of the passenger using their service. This is a different thing. Driverless cars still can't allow their passengers to get injured and killed which is going to present a lot of technical and social challenges for these companies. They all thought that playing a word game would get them out of the difficult problems all transportation companies have to solve and be liable for.
  • jlongr 12d ago
    There's this prevailing narrative that someday self-driving cars will eliminate all human-controlled driving and that these types of stories are like milestones in the path to that future utopia. But I don't think that's the case anymore than the narrative that LLMs will eventually displace all software engineers.
    • ggreer 12d ago
      The invention of the automobile didn't eliminate all horses, but it certainly replaced the vast majority of horses. In 7 years we've gone from GPT-2 to Fable and Astra. There seems to be no sign of slowdown, except from the top AI labs who want to slow down out of caution. It would be incredibly surprising to me if in another 7 years, my software engineering skills were still useful. AI capabilities will get to the point where even the best human is adding noise to the system, similar to today's chess engines and calculators. Self-driving cars will take longer to roll out because they require new hardware and changes to laws, but I don't see how a career such as "truck driver" or "cab driver" exists in 20 years. At most it would be for a few niche uses and tourism novelty (similar to steam locomotives or horse-drawn buggies).
      • eru 12d ago
        I mostly agree. However, I do actually think that many of the skills you use as a software engineer will still be useful in 7 years. It's just that, as you suggest, no one will let us near any actual code.
      • htrp 12d ago
        >It would be incredibly surprising to me if in another 7 years, my software engineering skills were still useful This profession has always required reskilling/ changing based on new technologies. How many people are still meaningfully employed as pascal programmers?
        • ggreer 12d ago
          Almost every career requires staying on top of new developments to remain competitive. Even mechanics must learn about new systems in vehicles to be able to repair them. Not many people are still meaningfully employed as Model T mechanics. The difference with LLMs is that they are a substitute for more general cognitive skills. Right now they are also a complement (using them increases the productivity of humans writing software), but it's only a matter of time before they improve to the point where they fully substitute. And it seems quite likely that the timeline for that is significantly shorter than my remaining career. If you are confident that there will be specific tasks that LLMs can't accomplish in 2033, I'm happy to entertain such ideas. But considering the current rate of progress, I can't think of anything like that.
  • singleshot_ 12d ago
    > If you want to force Uber to take responsibility for the driver, the simplest thing is to get rid of the driver. No. The easiest thing to do would be arbitrate against uber. Deploying a fleet of self driving cars would be much, much more complicated.
  • CPLX 12d ago
    > If you want to force Uber to take responsibility... the simplest thing is... To use the force of law and government to force them to take responsibility. Every other answer is bullshit.
  • c22 12d ago
    This sounds about right. When Uber's driverless car killed someone they got off pretty easy: *"In March 2019, Arizona prosecutors ruled that Uber was not criminally responsible for the crash. The back-up driver of the vehicle was charged with negligent homicide, pled guilty to endangerment, and was sentenced to three years' probation." [0] 0:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg
    • nextaccountic 12d ago
      So.. there's a driver in driverless cars. A fall guy that will take all the blame should the company needs to produce someone to be arrested, but don't otherwise have leverage to earn a decent living
      • gruez 12d ago
        >So.. there's a driver in driverless cars. A fall guy that will take all the blame should the company needs to produce someone to be arrested Are you seriously pretending the driver doesn't have agency here? This accident was easily preventable by the safety driver, which makes the "fall guy" characterization misleading. Sure, maybe there was some risk of complacency, but what's the alternative? Should uber have gone full workplace surveillance and have a camera trained on the safety driver's face, to make sure she was paying attention?
        • stefan_ 12d ago
          But.. they did have that? What a bizarre argument. And yes, if you make software that drives the car, release it into public traffic, and then your software runs someone over that would be plainly visible to a reasonable human driver (the misleading dashcam footage you release to make it seem way too dark [to a shitty dashcam sensor] notwithstanding) - you should absolutely bear responsibility! How is that even a question? You did that! Not whoever you put there as a "safety driver". We can adjudicate their responsibility separately, but it's certainly not 100%.
    • gruez 12d ago
  • joshstrange 12d ago
    > The bad guy here is the driver. We can agree that the driver made bad choices but I feel like you are skimming over the 2 women's responsibility in this situation. Intoxicated to the point of vomiting, arguing over the cleaning fee, and wandering away from the car while parked, yes illegally, on the freeway. Not sure what your experiences have been with drunk people but I can tell you that dealing with 1 drunk person can be hard to control, let alone 2. I'd be interested to hear where other people draw the line on the driver's culpability. If he left them at a gas station and one of them was still hit and killed by a car would he still be at fault? In my mind Uber/Lyft provide transportation, they aren't babysitters, there has to be a limit to their responsibility. Perhaps the driver was more at fault here but this outcome (how the driver reacted) is not in the slightest bit surprising to me given everything I know about Uber and how it treats drivers and passengers.
    • jester997 12d ago
      If you don’t punish the corporation they won’t ensure they vet their employees and have strict policies and procedures around handling customers. So in my mind the driver was at fault criminal negligence, but when the driver can be any untrained pleb with a phone, the company assumes the risk and should be held liable.
      • joshstrange 12d ago
        I’m not at all opposed to Uber getting slapped. I just think that “the driver is the bad guy” is incredibly reductionist and absolves Uber of the responsibility that I think we both agree that hold.
        • jester997 12d ago
          The driver IS the bad guy. Any driver who stops and forces their customers onto a freeway doesn’t know how to drive, let alone shuttle people around for money. They would rather put people at risk than spend an hour cleaning their car. This is practically the definition of criminal negligence.
  • OutOfHere 12d ago
    Uber is bad too for not training drivers to not do something like this.
    • m00x 12d ago
      I've driven busses and I was never trained not to do this. This falls under common sense.
      • mcmcmc 12d ago
        Maybe not common sense, but if you have a drivers license you should absolutely know it
      • orwin 12d ago
        (in my country, to get a bus driver license, you have to go through training that explain how to act in weird situation, how to identify dangers and which danger to prefer. You have a whole hour about always stopping at a safe place (parking, bus stop, red lignt, stop sign) before getting involved with anything that happen inside)
      • OutOfHere 12d ago
        In the US, in employment, there is no such thing as common sense. People come from diverse backgrounds. When you have a million employees, anything is possible as an untrained baseline. Everything has to be trained and accounted for.
  • phyzix5761 12d ago
    You all realize that when AI takes everyone's jobs the only way people will survive is by pledging allegiance to AI companies so they feed and house them right? Its not going to lead to some utopia where people are free to paint and write novels all day. People will basically become slaves to these companies. I would think twice about pushing for driverless cars and replacing people with agentic workflows.
  • josefx 12d ago
    > The bad guy here is the driver. Could Uber have done more? Isn't their entire business model build around bypassing the regulations build around the taxi industry? Things like training for new drivers and I think they even refused to do mandatory background checks early on. > If you want to force Uber to take responsibility for the driver, the simplest thing is to get rid of the driver. When their driverless car ran over a cyclist they pretended it was too dark to see anything, using a video from a cheap camera as "evidence".
    • senordevnyc 12d ago
      [flagged]
  • redsocksfan45 12d ago
    [dead]
  • calvinmorrison 12d ago
    Cars are an amazing way to shift liability around. Try to start your own rail line, good luck. Have 10,000 drivers with 10,000 accidents? no problem.
  • sandeepkd 12d ago
    Yes the driver made a poor decision in a situation that he was not trained for. However enrolling and onboarding the driver is a part of Uber's process. The situation may have been avoided if Uber had this strict clause in its onboarding manual to never stop the car or drop the passenger at unsafe spot. The driver and rider are bound by the Uber negotiated contract atleast until the end of ride. On the driverless cars, the chances are that the companies would come up with some innovative legal clause to add to their terms and services to avoid taking any liability from the driverless car's action.
    • randyrand 12d ago
      > The situation may have been avoided if Uber had this strict clause in its onboarding manual to never stop the car or drop the passenger at unsafe spot. You think they don't?
      • emmelaich 12d ago
        Pretty sure they don't.
      • sandeepkd 12d ago
        Its interesting, saying sorry for your mistakes using plain words does not have the same impact as saying it in a convincing manner as if you mean it. Giving them a 10 page long documentation and asking them to just acknowledge it as a part of onboarding process wont do the job. We are talking about human life here and an emphasis on security should be baked into mind by regular training, and it is usually required for such jobs in general. Being responsible for some one else's safety should have a higher bar than being responsible for your own safety. I cannot claim to have done the onboarding process myself, tried to look up online and the most I could find is that a good amount of time is spend on doing background checks. I was able to find Uber's employee onboarding information for their corporate employees and it turns out that there is indeed some training required for people who are managing your corporate property. Ironically I do not see any mandatory (ideally paid for) training provided by Uber to drivers when they are handling other human beings (passengers). And to be fair its hard to predict everything, mistakes happen unfortunately, the goal should always be to get to a better state than where we are as of today.
  • gamblor956 12d ago
    A company is liable for the actions of its workers whether they are W2 employees or 1099 independent contractors. That distinction governs the relationship between the worker and the company, not the company and its customers. A worker's criminal actions also usually do not entail criminal liability for the company except in very rare situations.
  • emmelaich 12d ago
    And surely the DMV has far greater 'vicarious liability', as they're the ones that issue licenses.