Hacker News Reader

Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

> “Thousands of people in Massachusetts have lost access to economic opportunities as a result of a screening that includes an unfair and unjust indefinite look-back period,” an Uber spokeswoman said today. “We have an opportunity to repair the current system in the rules process so that people who deserve to work are not denied the opportunity.”

Given all of the negative press about Uber lately, you'd think they'd give some more thought before publicly defending the right of sex offenders, people with suspended licenses, and people with multiple serious driving offenses to work as taxi drivers.

View on HN

I will defend the right of sex offenders, people with suspended licenses etc. unless I know the specific crime for which they were convicted. A person pissing in a bush can become a sexual offender, an 18 year old kid having sex with 16 year old girlfriend can become sex offender. People might get their license suspended because of economic hardship.

Putting all these people in same bracket as a brazen criminal is a bad idea.

Yes but that is a different issue that has little baring on this case.

If you would not be able to pass a CBC and hold a taxi license you should not be driving people around.

If you think edge cases are an issue then it's an issue with the criminal justice system not background check.

There will always be extreme cases because you need to draw a line at some point.

You might find it acceptable for an 18 year old to have sex with your 16 year old child, how about 19? 20?

Public urination can land you on the list but it's pretty rare compared to actual sexual assault cases.

Uber's entire business model is pretty much to cut in on traditional licensed taxi services by lowering the entry requirements for their drivers, on the assumption that customers prefer that risk/cost tradeoff. If you are more risk averse, you're not their customer - you use a traditional taxi.

I am personally fine to ride with a driver who was convicted of anything as long as he has served his/her time. I consider the debt paid and believe in second chances.

If traditional Taxi drivers want to use "our drivers are safer than Uber" as a competitive advantage then let them be but I don't see why Uber should be forced into some arbitrary check as long as the riders know their options.

Probably safe to say that those fringe cases aren't representative of the full slew of 8,000 people here.

What you're describing are really rare edge cases. Nearly all people on the sex offender registry actually did something that justifies being on there. And those people should not be put into a position of power over strangers at night.

As for economic hardship, I don't see how that justifies getting a job as a driver when your license is suspended. It's literally illegal for them to drive at all like that. It doesn't matter why it's suspended, people for whom it is illegal to be driving should not be given a job as a driver.

> Nearly all people on the sex offender registry actually did something that justifies being on there.

Citation? I don't necessarily doubt it's true, but 'nearly all' can be completely relative. I'd like to see actual numbers for a statement like that.

As far as I'm concerned, just 1% is enough for me to question whether this is a reasonable metric and 10% would be "this is utter garbage"

Indeed, of the things I've read, the sex offender registry is quite flawed.[0]

[0] https://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2013/09/02/the-wrongfull...

At a guess, I bet the register has large fractions of serious criminals and also your "rare" edge cases.

The probability that someone doing one of these minor things getting on the register might be low. But the number of people doing them in the first place will roughly compensate.

Anyway, laws where there is a low probability of a serious (and over the top) punishment are bad. For one thing they don't work well as incentives. Worse, they are most likely to hit the disadvantaged, low status people who have less leverage to officials to look the other way.

Those `rare edge cases` you're marginalizing represent real people's lives.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article41364675.html

I gotta say, It's a struggle for me to read these threads and see people who share your callous comfort with the status quo.

They are in fact rare cases, and the cases where those people are denied the desired opportunity to drive for Uber are even rarer. More people are raped --- set aside sexually assaulted --- in taxi cabs every year than are denied this opportunity.

It is obviously a real problem that people are placed on sex offender registries for peeing in bushed. But the commenter above isn't required to address every real problem in pointing out that there's a good public policy reason to avoid having people convicted of real sexual assault offenses driving cabs.

I think it is upto the ridesharing company to set the standards and not an arbitrary bureaucrat. In fact I believe people like you and me might be able to invent better methods of detecting people of dubious characters and can deny them job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com