Uber and a Child’s Death
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
"Mr. Muzaffar, who cooperated with the police after the accident, had been driving for Uber about a month, his lawyer said. It was a full-time job, using his own car, to support four kids. In the new sharing economy, he takes the fall."
Come on! Regardless of whether Uber also has liability, this guy hit three people and killed one of them, he's not some innocent fall guy. In any event, he either had or should have had vehicle insurance, so in what sense is he taking a fall?
He'll take the fall because Uber's going to do everything in their power to ensure the claim doesn't hit their insurance. Fortunately, the CPUC passed a law last summer to ensure that the ride-sharing companies have to actually carry a significant level of insurance for their drivers.
Fortunate in the sense that this girl's family might see some sort of consideration for their daughter's death and the other injuries.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813956
[2] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/08/airbnb-in...
- The lawsuit suggests Uber is at least partly at fault, because the app is distracting, and Mr. Muzaffar takes the "fall" for Uber's distracting app.
Uber drivers are considered freelancers/contractors, and not "on the clock" until a fare is accepted.
Would you want to pay for a liability that you might not be legally responsible for?
It's common sense to not pay for things you don't have to.
A more valid analogy would be a cab, without a passenger on-board, responding to a call to pick someone up. Turning right onto the street the prospective fare lives, the car strikes pedestrians who have a walk signal.
Whose liability insurance covers that?
An uber driver with no call has no reason to be moving as far as I know.
...which, per TFA, Mr. Muzaffar was.
And it doesn't fit with uber not even knowing if the death involved a driver until they got his name.
Ideally getting a taxi cab license would be much like getting a driver's license where anyone who wanted one could get one with a minimum of hassle while still enforcing a regulatory framework.
The situation between uber, its drivers, and victims of traffic accidents is definitely subpar, I think there's a lot of blame to go around between uber, the taxi cartels, its regulators, and its legislators.
Before the push to dethrone taxis, I think they were a reasonably priced upmarket good, priced north of taxis, but infinitely more convenient and flexible than hiring a car service. That's not a 10+x multiplier on investment though, and it's not a high-margin business, especially if you want to retain good livery drivers. That said, the pressure probably would've provided a few things: a. a graceful decline in medallion prices b. catalyst for change in Taxi markets
I don't know where they want to go with the service, but I know that the decided anti-regulatory push, combined with the tone of Uber's public statements has pushed me towards more traditional taxis (who in Boston actually have e-hail).
The issue here is Uber's being all, "Woah, wasn't us. Dude didn't have a paying fare in the car at the time, so it's all on that guy."
This seems like a rather delicate interpretation of how people perceive group belonging and responsibility.
It also seems incredibly scummy.
It's similar to the issue with BYOD at work--if an employee sends inappropriate pictures to a competitor using their own phone while also at an office, to what extent is the company reasonable in being upset, and to what extent is it the company vs the employee being responsible?
The device being a car or minivan instead of a phone only serves to present a more extreme example.
One of the most unfortunate trends of the 21st century so far is the increasing integration of work and off-hours life, and the similarly increasing inability to acknowledge the effects of this by companies.
This is just Uber trying to reap the benefits of providing a taxi service, without bearing any of the costs of the risk created by their service. It's a textbook case of externalizing costs while keeping profit privatized. In this case, the costs will be externalized onto injured people because drivers almost certainly don't have the resources to pay the resulting damages.
Of course, cab companies do this too. If a cab kills your kid, good luck getting more than the $50k or so minimum liability insurance required by state law. However, cabs are regulated parts of the transportation framework. In theory, in return for externalizing these costs to the public, they have to provide certain benefits, such as not discriminating between rich and poor neighborhoods, etc.
Moreover, in return for indulging the fiction that cab drivers are independent contractors, the public extracts certain concessions in return for taking on the externalized costs of accidents. Cab companies have to accept regulated rates (that are lower than what Uber charges), and have to agree to serve the whole city.
Further, I don't think the "he wasn't actively driving someone in the car so he wasn't an Uber driver at that time" is gonna fly. I think it would be more accurate to go by his use of the app; if he was using it and driving around looking for a fare, he's an active driver. If he's not using it, he's not.
It's really sad that this little girl died, and anything Uber's app may have done to in any way contribute to her death should be fixed. I don't know if they're liable and I don't think them paying out a big sum will work, but they should have some impetus to improve their app from this. I'm sure they will be thinking about that anyway.
They will claim he should have pulled over and used the app in accordance with state law, and that uber is not at fault because the driver was being criminally negligent.
Even though a taxi driver is pretty much a regular human, and a crown vic in taxi-yellow is pretty much a regular car.
Example: High-risk oil drilling operation off the coast. Engineer drops a wrench, wrench breaks a pipe, thousands of gallons of oil flood into the ocean. Do we hold the engineer liable for a billion dollars in environmental damages, because he just dumped oil in the ocean? Or do we hold the company liable, because they were engaging in oil drilling that inherently risks dumping oil in the ocean?
Does it matter if the miner was an employee of International Coal Group, Inc, or if he was digging in his own backyard? It was just a regular human in a regular mine explosion.
The point of these counter examples is that accidents resulting from industrial activity are certainly morally tied to the corporation that is profiting off said activity. Uber is taking regular drivers, and putting them in a totally non-regular working environment. There are psychological effects to sitting in a drivers seat for hours and hours that regular commuters don't experience, yet Uber is not training their drivers for this.
Being responsible for the accidents your economic activity encourages is part of the bargain of Incorporation. To operate otherwise would encourage trading safety for profitability in the most extreme ways.
When drivers accept a call, furthermore, they need to
interface with the app. The suit goes on to note that
under California law, it is illegal to use a “wireless
telephone” while driving unless it is specifically
configured to be hands-free — which the app is not. In
essence, the suit argues that Uber was negligent in the
“development, implementation and use of the app” so as
to cause the driver to be distracted and inattentive.So dreht sich alles auf der Welt.
The contention in the suit, however, seems to be that Uber's app is designed not to be hands free, and on that basis asserts negligence on Uber's part (where "negligence" is defined as "actions a reasonable person would deem likely to cause serious injury or death that are willfully undertaken despite that risk" — or something to that effect; lawyers reading along at home please correct or clarify as needed).
EDIT: s/criminal negligence/negligence/g
There is significant overlap between the elements and standards necessary to warrant punitive damages and criminal negligence statues, but they aren't identical and the two processes are entirely separate in terms of how and whether they proceed.
I have never been in a cab with a hands-free meter or GPS. Does a hands-free taxi meter even exist? They're pretty analog devices with buttons you push to stop or start them.
Uber's app, however, requires poking at your smartphone screen.
Ideally, cabbies and Uber drivers make all their necessary communication noodling while stopped, in between fares. In reality, both frequently distract themselves with both the necessary navigational/fare stuff they have to do with phone/GPS/meter and unnecessary calling/texting besides.
When drivers accept a call, furthermore, they need to
interface with the app. The suit goes on to note that
under California law, it is illegal to use a “wireless
telephone” while driving unless it is specifically
configured to be hands-free — which the app is not. In
essence, the suit argues that Uber was negligent in the
“development, implementation and use of the app” so as
to cause the driver to be distracted and inattentive.Okay with a more thorough search I found an actual claim of the specific driver being distracted on page 9 of the suit, not sure why I didn't find it before.
http://www.dmv.org/ca-california/special-licenses.php
A truck driver who ran someone over similarly might be personally responsible and the company he was working for at the time might also be responsible. Truck drivers either work for an hourly wage (if the company they work for owns the truck) or they get paid by the mile (if they own the truck). What would happen if an owner-operator ran someone over on his way to pick up a job? I imagine that it would be completely on him and the company that arranged the job for him would bear no responsibility.
UberX drivers get paid a portion of the fares they collect, so they're not paid by the hour. I think it would be fairly clear they're not "employees" in the traditional sense but rather contractors. http://readwrite.com/2013/08/19/financing-your-next-startupa...
I'm not saying that I think Uber is doing the morally responsible thing by distancing themselves from this situation but neither is it an open-and-shut case that they're 100% liable for sure.
Another thought: This incident points to precisely the same type of litigation that self-driving cars will have to face, in fact in those cases the service provider/manufacturer will be hit even more since there will be no driver to "take the fall".
Over time, the statistics about how there are far fewer deaths in driverless markets will shift the dialog.
Think about Ireland, where drunk driving deaths are understood by the public to be a legitimate public health crisis. If Ireland allows driverless cars and the UK doesn't, then the forcing function will be in place and the UK will eventually bend.