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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

Why? It’s not a problem if Uber kills pedestrians, even in situations where it’s completely avoidable. It’s only (legally) a problem if they’re violating the rules of the road while doing so.

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> It’s only (legally) a problem if they’re violating the rules of the road while doing so.

I doubt that's true, but even if it were, I believe the rules of the road are "always yield to pedestrians, even if you have the right-of-way".

In general motorists are not held strongly accountable for killing pedestrians or cyclists. Juries in the U.S. are very reluctant to convict. I'm not sure Uber can rely on that, however. While juries are reluctant to convict drivers, driverless vehicles are another matter. As I said in another comment, they're going to have to invent a crime that puts cyclists and pedestrians positively at fault in these situations.

People jump in front of the NYC subways multiple times per week in an attempt to commit suicide, how often do you read about the train engineers going to prison for that? Literally never. If someone tries to commit suicide by jumping in front of your car then you're generally not legally liable, as long as you're not intoxicated and you pull over immediately and phone it in.

First, I assume the rules for trains are different than for cars. Second, I expect that someone jumping in front of your car is different than running over a cyclist in a bike lane.

I think their (idiotically stated) point was that there are plenty of situation where you can kill someone on the road in an accident and not have any legal liability for it.

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