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Arizona Prosecutor Says Uber Not Criminally Liable In Fatal Self-Driving Crash (reuters.com)
Uber is not criminally liable in a March 2018 crash in Tempe, Arizona, in which one of the company's self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors said on Tuesday. "The Yavapai County Attorney said in a letter made public that there was 'no basis for criminal liability' for Uber, but that the back-up driver, Rafaela Vasquez, should be referred to the Tempe police for additional investigation," reports Reuters. From the report: Vasquez, the Uber back-up driver, could face charges of vehicular manslaughter, according to a police report in June. Vasquez has not previously commented and could not immediately be reached on Tuesday. Based on a video taken inside the car, records collected from online entertainment streaming service Hulu and other evidence, police said last year that Vasquez was looking down and streaming an episode of the television show "The Voice" on a phone until about the time of the crash. The driver looked up a half-second before hitting Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died from her injuries. Police called the incident "entirely avoidable."
Yavapai County Attorney's Office, which examined the case at the request of Maricopa County where the accident occurred, did not explain the reasoning for not finding criminal liability against Uber. Yavapai sent the case back to Maricopa, calling for further expert analysis of the video to determine what the driver should have seen that night. The National Transportation Safety Board and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are still investigating.
Yavapai County Attorney's Office, which examined the case at the request of Maricopa County where the accident occurred, did not explain the reasoning for not finding criminal liability against Uber. Yavapai sent the case back to Maricopa, calling for further expert analysis of the video to determine what the driver should have seen that night. The National Transportation Safety Board and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are still investigating.
Arizona wants Uber investment dollars so they would gladly scape goat an Uber employee while giving the company a mulligan. Reminds me of the Arab Bank Supreme Court decision last year where the court dismissed a lawsuit against a foreign company that funded terrorism because the precedent would be bad for business. The legal partiality for the corporate person over the individual is becoming more and more apparent.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
This is the same Yavapai County AG that is prosecuting legal medical marijuana patients for possessing cannabis concentrates that were purchased legally in a dispensary. She recently claimed that distilling extracts from cannabis was similar to making explosives with AMFO
Speaking of contributions, she got $500,000 from Insys Pharmaceuticals which markets a synthetic THC and Fentanyl lollypops, two products which are threatened by medical marijuana.
Human drivers are liable for breaking traffic laws when using company-owned vehicles. This isn't new. Just because this vehicle was testing autonomous driving doesn't mean the human sitting inside is exempt from liability. She had one job while sitting in that car, and it wasn't watching videos on her phone.
Secondly, it was found that Uber isn't criminally liable; they could still be hit with a civil suit.
airline pilot's errors do not have Criminal proceedings most of the time. So sticking this on a under trained backup driver with poor systems in place + really bad video that looks like was made to make uber look good is very bad.
This is the moment, this is the checkpoint where the hype meets reality. You do not want to accept the job of 'backup driver' because you are basically taking the blame, and it doesn't pay enough. And the driverless car isn't able to do this task on its own without a driver, per the evidence of this case. The law will not protect you, per this case. Does the 'backup driver' have sufficient control to avoid dangerous situations in the first place? Are there traps they can't avoid even if they were not on their phone? Did the company sufficiently explain to the driver that they were not actually in reserve for backup duty, but that they were from the first moment the legal and primary operator of that vehicle? If not, I could understand why they were on their phone; waiting for some timely and orderly signal to pay attention and resume operation of the vehicle. If I was on the jury for that individual, I would need to know that information. This is new and unproven technology, and quite-frankly, the state allowed it. The state suddenly refers this case for prosecution of the individual?
Even if this driver wasn't watching their phone, there is a cognitive disconnect between the autopilot and the 'backup driver' that is supposed to suddenly become situationally aware in a split second. There are numerous tragedies in trains, and planes already to demonstrate this problem; and those are cases that are actually simpler from an automation perspective. Additionally, Tesla (inaptly-named ) Autopilot has its history.
Anybody's guess who would be responsible the moment that some states allow a truly driverless car. Will some hapless engineer be responsible? the person who assembled the car? The CEO? The person who hailed the car?
Maybe Google or Tesla, or xyz is a different case, but I doubt it. I suspect they will suffer from the same hype of delivering 80% of the solution and claim victory (or perpetually just 2 years away.) The last 19.999% to ensure reasonable safety and availability under all conditions may be nearly impossible and I'm not hearing much talk about it. Maybe in constrained scenarios it might be better odds, but who is responsible for those decisions?
Is lesser cases, who gets the traffic ticket when a driverless car exceeds the speed limit? (Do driverless cars pull-over if a cop car is behind them?) Will people pay for cars that refuse to speed?
> Hold up. While it's tempting to think this case is the bar we're setting. Consider the released footage of the driver for a second. [theguardian.com] Imagine any industry where you look away from a machine in motion for that long, yeah, you're at fault for your reckless behavior. Like if I was watching a show on my phone while operating a table saw, yeah, I really wouldn't have a strong case for an injury lawsuit.
You have a point, but conversely: people are really, really, really bad at vigilance tasks, where they are supposed to monitor something that almost always goes right, look for something that almost always doesn't appear, etc. Asking someone to be a vigilant backup driver for 4 hours may be a lot harder than driving for 4 hours.
When airline pilots make an error worth prosecuting, there is generally not enough left of them to identify, let alone prosecute.
Also there is a fucking world of difference between "made an error" and "decided to watch a TV show instead of working".