Uber and a Child’s Death

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/uber-and-a-childs-death/

33 61 12 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

angersock3• 12 years ago

So, the argument (as the article relays it) is that a driver is only working for/with Uber when a fare is in their vehicle--therefore, the death of the child having happened when no fare was yet in the vehicle is not the fault of an Uber contractor/employee and by extension Uber.

This seems like a rather delicate interpretation of how people perceive group belonging and responsibility.

It also seems incredibly scummy.

hueving• 12 years ago

Where do you draw the line though. How long does the driver have to have waited since the last fare before he/she is no longer 'on-shift'?

angersock3• 12 years ago

So, that's interesting, right?

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.

femto• 12 years ago

The lawsuit suggests the test should be whether the driver is logged into Uber's application. This would seem like quite a good test, in that it is measurable to an exact time, and presumably indicates that the driver is available for fares, meaning they are "on-shift".

sliverstorm7• 12 years ago

This reads to me as yet another example of how Uber wants to be a taxi service without having to submit to any of the laws a taxi service must.

oleganza• 12 years ago

Does it matter if the driver was in a Uber, Taxi or a personal car? It was a regular human in a regular car.

sliverstorm7• 12 years ago

To my understanding, if a taxi driver was to strike a pedestrian, the taxi company would be liable, because the driver was operating for the taxi company.

Even though a taxi driver is pretty much a regular human, and a crown vic in taxi-yellow is pretty much a regular car.

thwest• 12 years ago

Does it matter if the operator was an employee of Tazreen Fashion, or self employed tailor? It was just a regular human in a regular fire.

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.

gasull2• 12 years ago

How would regulation have prevented this at all? A cab would be as likely to hit the child.

rosser7• 12 years ago

I don't think you can make that assertion. All the devices (meter, GPS, &c) in the cabin of a cab are set up for hands-free operation. Even when I've been in a cab where the driver is on the phone (which is often), he's invariably been using an earbud or Bluetooth headset (or, occasionally, speakerphone, which can be annoying).

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

bradleyjg2• 12 years ago

Only the state can formally accuse you of a crime. The complaint accuses Uber of a variety of torts under a variety of theories, and includes accusations necessary to seek punitive damages ("The conduct of the Defendants and each of them was engaged in with fraud, oppression and/or malice, and was in conscious disregard of the rights and safety of others ...").

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.

jdminhbg2• 12 years ago

All the devices (meter, GPS, &c) in the cabin of a cab are set up for hands-free operation.

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.

Zikes2• 12 years ago

The article says that the lawsuit claims the driver was distracted by the Uber app.

Dylan168075• 12 years ago

Does it? I can't find it. It looks to me like someone is playing a game of implications. It says the app handles pickups in a way that is unsafe to interact with while driving, but there is no claim that such a thing was happening at the time of the accident.

bonemachine2• 12 years ago

The original article was really quite informative about this. Please have a look:

  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.

gasull2• 12 years ago

That's a very good point.

angersock3• 12 years ago

As we've seen with the Google buses, when an individual does it they must follow the laws, and when a company does it it isn't a crime.

bradleyjg2• 12 years ago

I can understand the argument that Uber has some liability here, either through their own negligence or vicariously. But the author of this article says:

"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?

rosser7• 12 years ago

I don't read that or anything else the article as a plea to pardon Mr. Muzaffar. It is not disputed that his operating a motor vehicle was the proximate cause in the death one person and serious injury to two more — all of them pedestrians.

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."

mikeyouse• 12 years ago

If he only had standard vehicle insurance, it wouldn't cover him if he were driving professionally.

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.

pachydermic• 12 years ago

Right. The insurance problem is the reason why I am hesitant to use these kinds of services (airbnb, peer-to-peer car rental, car-pooling apps). When something goes wrong, what happens? It just freaks me out - not that companies conforming to existing norms and regulations won't try to screw you over either.

clavalle• 12 years ago

I thought Uber required drivers to have commercial level insurance. Is that not the case?

sliverstorm7• 12 years ago

- Typically companies are responsible for errors committed by their employees, unless there is malevolence/criminal intent/criminal negligence...

- 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.

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

employees

Uber drivers are considered freelancers/contractors, and not "on the clock" until a fare is accepted.

msandford• 12 years ago

I can't help but think that a cab driver who ran over someone would be personally liable. Perhaps the cab company would be too, but the driver is licensed to drive completely aside from his employment. He failed to drive properly.

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.

ameister14• 12 years ago

Whether he was using said app at the time or not, the lack of hands-free capability on the app is serious. The case does make some good points about that.

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.

fleitz3• 12 years ago

Actually if he was using the app Uber's lawyers are going to have a fun time because then he's being willfully negligent.

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.

rayiner3• 12 years ago

Uber asserts that Uber drivers without fares are not Uber cars.

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.

crapshoot101• 12 years ago

I'm inclined to agree with you, but its interesting: Uber has a legitimate point that in the end, it was the driver - but an Uber drive is not a "part time" Uber employee only. Per their rationale ,would an Uber driver only be liable when their driver is taking an Uber fare / on the way to one? Ie, is the idea of one job / one source of income part of the issue they are pushing back against here?

baddox• 12 years ago

Do you think the externalized costs of car-sharing services are greater than the externalized costs of government-regulated taxi services?

rayiner3• 12 years ago

Depends on the location. In New York City, cabs are required to carry $100k per person/$300k per event liability insurance, versus the $25k/$50k state minimum, which is all you can expect Uber drivers to have. So more cost is passed back to the cab company in the form of insurance premiums, and less is externalized onto the public.

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.

Jun8• 12 years ago

This is Uber's first major "ransackgate" (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2825177, http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/the-moment-of-truth-for-air...): rather than playing dumb or being ultra-cautious and making teh same mistakes that Airbnb did they should immediately move to make the situation right. Sadly this incident involves deaths rather than just theft.

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".

DrStalker• 12 years ago

I think that is going to be the biggest challenge of driver-less cars; we've seen the massive fuss when people start claiming their accelerators got stuck, what happens when someone claims their car crash was because of a bug in Google Car?

erikpukinskis• 12 years ago

Well, in some sense it is moot. Driverless cars are a substantial shift in efficiency, so there is a strong economic pressure to adopt them. The fears you describe will only get traction in some markets. That will slow adoption, but it won't halt it.

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.

harryh2• 12 years ago

How much would it cost Uber to just carry insurance for things like this? Would it materially impact their business? Anyone wanna take a stab at this?

rosser7• 12 years ago

Gosh, this was flagged off the front page quickly...

Uber and a Child’s Death

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