Uber and a Child’s Death

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:<p>&quot;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.&quot;<p>Come on! Regardless of whether Uber also has liability, this guy hit three people and killed one of them, he&#x27;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?

So, the argument (as the article relays it) is that a driver is only working for&#x2F;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&#x2F;employee and by extension Uber.<p>This seems like a rather delicate interpretation of how people perceive group belonging and responsibility.<p>It also seems incredibly scummy.

&gt; Uber asserts that Uber drivers without fares are not Uber cars.<p>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&#x27;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&#x27;t have the resources to pay the resulting damages.<p>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.

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.<p>Further, I don&#x27;t think the &quot;he wasn&#x27;t actively driving someone in the car so he wasn&#x27;t an Uber driver at that time&quot; 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&#x27;s an active driver. If he&#x27;s not using it, he&#x27;s not.<p>It&#x27;s really sad that this little girl died, and anything Uber&#x27;s app may have done to in any way contribute to her death should be fixed. I don&#x27;t know if they&#x27;re liable and I don&#x27;t think them paying out a big sum will work, but they should have some impetus to improve their app from this. I&#x27;m sure they will be thinking about that anyway.

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.

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

I can&#x27;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.<p><a href="http://www.dmv.org/ca-california/special-licenses.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dmv.org&#x2F;ca-california&#x2F;special-licenses.php</a><p>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.<p>UberX drivers get paid a portion of the fares they collect, so they&#x27;re not paid by the hour. I think it would be fairly clear they&#x27;re not &quot;employees&quot; in the traditional sense but rather contractors. <a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/08/19/financing-your-next-startupas-an-uber-driver#awesm=~oubvAUD9SPmnQY" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;readwrite.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;19&#x2F;financing-your-next-startupa...</a><p>I&#x27;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&#x27;re 100% liable for sure.

This is Uber&#x27;s first major &quot;ransackgate&quot; (see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2825177" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=2825177</a>, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/the-moment-of-truth-for-airbnb-as-users-home-is-utterly-trashed/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;27&#x2F;the-moment-of-truth-for-air...</a>): rather than playing dumb or being ultra-cautious and making teh same mistakes that Airbnb did they should <i>immediately</i> move to make the situation right. Sadly this incident involves deaths rather than just theft.<p>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&#x2F;manufacturer will be hit even more since there will be no driver to &quot;take the fall&quot;.

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?

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