Uber To Pay Up To $25 Million For Misleading Advertising In California (bbc.co.uk)

Bruce66423 writes: Uber has agreed to a settlement of $10 million for misleading advertising about the quality of its background checks for drivers. One particular concern was its absence of fingerprint-based checking.Uber has agreed to no longer use such terms as "safest drive on the road" in its advertising. Prosecutors said Uber failed to prevent 25 people with criminal records from becoming drivers, including several sex offenders and a convicted murderer. Another language change included renaming its "safe ride fee" as a "booking fee." Uber has agreed to make the $10 million payment within 60 days to settle the agreement, otherwise they will be forced to pay an additional $15 million in two years.

Comments

But ... but ...

[Hognoxious]

But it's on the internet and we've got an app!

Failed to prevent?

[thegarbz]

What in the actual hell? Uber has "failed to prevent 25 people with criminal records from becoming drivers"? So frigging what?

Either the people are normal every day people who should have no issue finding work, or they are dangerous criminals and shouldn't have been released. Why the heck should Uber be preventing free people from working?

Re:Failed to prevent?

[drinkypoo]

Oh my god, not a whole 25 of them!!!?1?! That's terrible!They will need hundreds more in order to reach parity with normal taxi services. It's safe to assume that California has just as many drivers for actual taxi services with a record as Uber does, even per capita, and maybe more. You are already not safe in a taxi in California, don't imagine that you are. (Not that it's safe to be a taxi driver, either...)

The real story here is that our country is a pressure cooker of inequity, just like most of the rest of the world, and when you apply energy to a system you add motion. But government doesn't want to fix society, so long as they can look busy. They don't want to work themselves out of a job.

Re:Failed to prevent?

[PopeRatzo]

you are better off admitting your past mistakes than trying to hide them.

You're not married, are you?

Re:Failed to prevent?

[gstoddart]

Why the heck should Uber be preventing free people from working?

Right, that way if some crazy guy goes on a shooting rampage or starts raping female passengers they can just say "why, we just let free people work and if passengers want safety and assurance we're not sending out psychopaths they're free to conduct their own background checks".

Sorry, but people do kind of expect when they request a cab -- oh, sorry, an illegal car-for-hire pretending it's an unregulated ride sharing service to which laws don't apply -- that a fucking serial killer isn't being sent to them.

See, one of the many fucking laws Uber claims don't apply to it are things like criminal background checks to protect the public safety. Oh, and commercial licenses, proper insurance, vehicle inspections, and shit like that.

Uber's entire business model is basically saying "you know all those laws places have enacted to ensure passenger safety and the life, well, none of them apply to us".

In this case, Uber straight up lied about the safety assurances they could give about drivers, and mislead passengers into thinking they conducted their background checks to a higher standard than other companies, and actually used terms like "safe" in their marketing.

So, yeah, when you lie to the public about how safe you are, and fail to do the level of background checks you suggest you do, people find out about it, and your dumb ass gets fined.

Just as an aside

[H3lldr0p]

Why are there laws and regulations preventing certain people form seeking employment based on past convictions?

For the most part, prosecutors can't even bring that stuff up as part of a argument in a court.

I get that we want to feel safe, but two things occur to me. First is that these people have "paid" for their crime. How is this not continuing a sentence after it's supposed to be over? Second, how do we expect people to make a better life after prison if we make it even harder for them to get gainful employment?

Re:Just as an aside

[drinkypoo]

I get that we want to feel safe, but two things occur to me. First is that these people have "paid" for their crime. How is this not continuing a sentence after it's supposed to be over?

People having "paid" for their crime is an argument against punishing them twice, not against exercising common sense. If someone has a criminal conviction for assault and battery, it may be unwise to hire them to drive a taxi.

Second, how do we expect people to make a better life after prison if we make it even harder for them to get gainful employment?

It is reasonable for not all avenues of employment to be open to all people. Remember, we're balancing their right to exist against society's right to be safe from them.

Re:Just as an aside

[EmagGeek]

My thoughts exactly. Punishment for a crime is supposed to be objective, measurable, and above all, finite. We go out of our way to ruin people's lives forever over seemingly trivial transgressions like speeding or jaywalking or smoking pot.

Re:Just as an aside

[roman_mir]

My thoughts exactly. Punishment for a crime is supposed to be objective, measurable, and above all, finite. We go out of our way to ruin people's lives forever over seemingly trivial transgressions like speeding or jaywalking or smoking pot.

- it's not supposed to be a 'punishment for crime', it's supposed to be a way to either rehabilitate a person or at least keep the society safe from a dangerous offender. USA system fails hard at both of these.

Taxi companies with modpoints?

[drinkypoo]

When you get modded "flamebait" for pointing out that normal taxi services regularly hire felons, and that taxi drivers often assault their passengers sexually or otherwise, it sure looks wacky. If you don't personally know multiple women who have been sexually assaulted by taxi drivers, maybe you should fuck right off, right now. I do. The idea that taxi drivers are safer than the general population is fucking stupid, and only fucking stupid people would espouse it. The official background checks are a pathetic joke.

If you don't want people to attack people, you have to improve society. You can't just improve taxi drivers. It doesn't work that way.

Re:Taxi companies with modpoints?

[PopeRatzo]

and that taxi drivers often assault their passengers

Taxi drivers are a lot more likely to be assaulted by their passengers than the other way around.

Re:Taxi companies with modpoints?

[Solandri]

It's the same problem which plagues nuclear power and many environmental standards. People incorrectly compare to a baseline of zero risk. There is no such thing as zero risk. Everyday objects you encounter give off radiation. Sunlight is hazardous and can cause cancer. But because people default to comparing to a zero baseline, they incorrectly decide that any radiation is bad. Or any raised cancer risk due to exposure to a chemical is unacceptable. Or any felon working as an Uber driver means Uber somehow screwed up.

Same thing with the suicides at Foxconn. Their worker suicide rate was lower than the suicide rate for the U.S. But because people were incorrectly comparing to a zero baseline, the perception was that Foxconn was doing something wrong and it became news. I even remember a hit piece making the rounds in the media years ago decrying the number of women in the military being raped. The Pentagon reviewed the numbers, and determined the frequency of rapes in the military was the same as in the general population. And if you factored in the age distribution of people in the service, the rape incident rate was substantially lower than among people of the same age in the general population. But again, comparing to a zero baseline led to the unrealistic expectation that there should be zero rapes.

"Insisting on absolute safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." - Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

Re:Taxi companies with modpoints?

[PopeRatzo]

But it's also not safe to be a taxi passenger.

It's about as safe as being a passenger in your own car. With the millions of taxi rides every day, how many do you think result in harm to the passenger?

Uber

[MitchDev]

Uber needs a new slogan: "We're cheaper than regular taxis, and there are reasons for that!"

Re:Uber

[fluffernutter]

We're the inexpensive choice... but you might get raped.

Re:Uber

[MitchDev]

"It's not just a car ride, it's an adventure!"