*"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]
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?
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%.
You're conveniently omitting the fact it's a self driving car prototype and that the safety driver is supposed to catch failures.
The driverless car that very much had a safety driver, which got distracted because she was watching TV shows on her phone?
The point being, you shouldn't be allowed to just hand off liability to someone you know won't handle it. I don't care what you put in any contract, hiring someone should not be a get out of liability free card. You should be on the hook for putting in the effort required to be confident that liability is managed well.
You should in fact not be allowed to do something dangerous, but say you were not liable because the danger was someone else's responsibility. No! The danger was your responsibility, no matter who you hire to manage it!
I don't see how that's a relevant point less those safety devices are mandatory. If my windshield broke, I was too lazy to fix it, and that resulted in auto-braking not working, then I was involved in an accident that could have been stopped with auto-braking, should I get extra flak because I didn't have auto-braking, even though it's not mandated?
>The point being, you shouldn't be allowed to just hand off liability to someone you know won't handle it. I don't care what you put in any contract, hiring someone should not be a get out of liability free card. You should be on the hook for putting in the effort required to be confident that liability is managed well.
The OP was talking about criminal responsibility. Obviously they should be responsible in civil court and pay damages, same as if UPS had one of its drivers crash into some kid. But should they be criminally responsible?