Slashdot Mirror
Uber: We Don't Need a Permit For Self-Driving Cars (cnet.com)
Uber has a simple approach to business: Don't ask for permission, but be prepared to seek forgiveness. Its foray into self-driving cars in California is no different. From a report on CNET: Confirming news that CNET broke Tuesday, the ride-hailing company officially announced Wednesday that it's rolling out a fleet of self-driving cars to passengers in San Francisco, making California only the second state in which Uber offers such services. But Uber didn't run the plan past the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which requires a permit for such cars. Now, the DMV told Uber to cut it out... or else. "It is illegal for the company to operate its self-driving vehicles on public roads until it receives an autonomous vehicle testing permit," the DMV wrote in a letter to Uber on Wednesday. "Any action by Uber to continue the operation of vehicles equipped with autonomous technology on public streets in California must cease." [...] The DMV warned Uber a month ago that it needed a permit to operate self-driving cars in the state, according to Brian Soublet, the department's chief legal counsel, who held a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. Soublet said he told the company the same thing Tuesday before its launch. But Uber didn't appear to listen. "We understand that there is a debate over whether or not we need a testing permit to launch self-driving Ubers in San Francisco," Anthony Levandowski, Uber's vice president of self-driving technology, wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "We have looked at this issue carefully and we don't believe we do."
Their entire business model is based around an asset light setup. They don't own or insure the cars that Uber drivers use.
This WAS their model until drivers started getting uppity about being sucked into it not really understanding what this meant for their cars, car related expenses, and "self employment" expenses, NOW the model is to move to fleets of autonomous vehicles and eliminate the contract drivers asap.
There's oversight involved if you have a permit. For example, you have to report any accidents or other incidents and those become part of the public record. If you aren't in the testing program then you don't need to report those.
But Uber is right in this case, so they're not breaking any laws.
The State of California disagrees. Note this little detail: over 20 companies have gotten permits from the State of California to test (drive) autonomous cars on public streets. That means that Uber is not acting in a regulative vacuum, it is just choosing to ignore the regulations that do exist.
In the words of the immortal Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Snowflakes are easily offended leftists who rage whenever someone disagrees with their political opinions. Uber is pretty much the opposite. They're going to barge forward with what they're doing until they get slapped down, and then they get right back up and do it again.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You think an autonomous permit has anything to do with certification of software and systems of an autonomous vehicle?
Yes,
because that's
EXACTLY
what it does.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
relatively safe before they get on the road
No it doesn't. Besides, liability laws do that.
Have you ever sued anybody?
Lawsuits are expensive, the judgment doesn't pay your lawyer's fees if you win, and if a pedestrian or passenger with horrible damages sues a driver who doesn't have a lot of money, all he can collect is the limit of the insurance policy, which may be only a fraction of the damages. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/0...
New York City had this problem with taxi drivers, so they raised the insurance coverage, and they also changed the partition between the passenger compartment and the driver's compartment, which gave drivers some protection against robbery but also caused some severe facial injuries in minor accidents.
The other problem with your libertarian ideas is that your fellow-travellers, the Republican pro-business conservatives, are working on tort "reform" which makes it more difficult for people who are injured to collect damages commensurate with the injuries.
Workers Compensation is like that. Would you want to lose an arm, and be compensated for a 25% disability under the no-fault disability system with $175 a week? Most people would rather be working in a factory with government regulations that prevents them from losing the arm in the first place.
The other stunt that your corporate masters are pulling is to put "arbitration clauses" into the fine print of contracts that you can sign. https://www.uber.com/legal/ter...
Any lawyer who handles personal injury cases can tell you that it's a lot easier and cheaper to prevent accidents in the first place than to go to court and try to compensate the victim afterwards. The drivers don't care. If they wind up with a million dollar judgment, they'll just go bankrupt or move back to the third-world country they came from.