It's like complaining that my Prius had an accident with somebody's Tesla, but Toyota and Tesla CEOs did not lose anything. Why should they?
Should a company be liable for losses caused by their workers while they’re on the job? Seems to me like the answer is yes, at least most of the time.
I struggle to see how Uber is any different to Sal's cars.
In the UK, Uber requires its drivers to have taxi insurance. In addition, it has 'backstop insurance', just in case an uber driver had lost their insurance / license.
I'd far rather be in an Uber in the UK than a typical minicab in the UK. Or a typical yellow taxi in new york.
Let’s say I call a plumbing company to fix a sink and the plumber floods my house. The company tells me, “That plumber is an independent contractor not employed by us. You’ll have to get restitution directly from him. Good luck, bye!”
I certainly wouldn’t accept this. I didn’t sign up to have some unknown third party do the work and be responsible for the outcome, I signed up to have the company I’m paying do it.
Imagine if your car is defective and the manufacturer tells you to get restitution from the subcontractors that made the part. Or if you bought a sandwich full of arsenic and they told you to talk to some random farmer who happened to grow the affected vegetable.
These companies want to have it both ways. They want to completely own the relationship with the customer... until something goes wrong. Then it’s all, “we’re just a broker for independent contractors, they’re responsible for everything, don’t talk to us.”
There’s nothing wrong with just being a broker, but you have to be consistent.
One argument for Grab to be responsible would be that Grab is probably in the best position to estimate the frequency and severity of such accidents and buy insurance to cover them.
Riders probably don't have the information necessary to specifically buy insurance for this, and so if riders have to use their own insurance they will have to make it part of some general purpose insurance which won't be as efficient and will spread the costs among everybody instead of just people using ride services.