
Uber sets self-driving battle at permission, not existence - GFischer
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/20/pay-no-attention-to-the-car-behind-the-curtain/
======
scarmig
I genuinely do not get Uber's strategy here. Even once self-driving cars are
mature, they'll occasionally screw up and sometimes kill someone. And Uber's
cars are so incredibly far from mature that operating without legal cover
is... just insane. If they kill and hit someone, Kalanick is easily portrayed
as a ready-made movie villain. Wantonly ignoring state and local laws in the
hopes of getting ahead of the pack, sacrificing the life of cute little
toddler Adam to the altar of Mammon?

And it's really not just portrayed: Uber'll deserve any and all punishment
thrown at them for this, up to and possibly including the shut down of the
company and criminal charges for the people who did this. And Uber'll be
setting the cause of self-driving cars back years, maybe even a decade.

This is all incredibly obvious too, and I don't think Uber folks are idiots.
Maybe they're getting desperate, and they're willing to eat the risk of the
company being destroyed because their business strategy for survival is
sensitive to getting to production-ready self-driving cars a year earlier than
they would have otherwise?

~~~
Fricken
Uber's is laying the groundwork to make the legal case that Tesla owners using
autopilot are in fact 'testers', presumably in hopes of tangling Tesla up.

'Levandowski compared Uber’s technology to Tesla’s autopilot feature, saying:
“It’s hard to understand why the DMV would seek to require self-driving Ubers
to get permits when it accepts that Tesla’s autopilot technology does not need
them."

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/uber-
defi...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/uber-defies-
california-self-driving-cars-san-francisco)

~~~
scarmig
That's interesting, if it's actually the case. It seems a bit of a stretch to
me--Uber is still opening itself up to existential risk--but if by doing so it
can plausibly kneecap Tesla and if it views Tesla similarly as an existential
risk, this move might make sense.

ETA: That is, from a business perspective. The fact that you might kill a
couple people in the meantime is kind of a deal breaker from a moral point of
view.

~~~
robrenaud
How many people does delaying the progress of self driving cars kill?

~~~
scarmig
Interesting point. Let's guesstimate it. I'll focus on the USA.

Let's assume that after the full transition, 0 people will die from automotive
accidents. This isn't the case, but it's close enough. Naively, that would
save roughly around 30k lives a year: in other words, every single day self-
driving cars are delayed kills a bit under 100 people. The dynamics of the
transition don't matter too much, assuming everything is simply shifted
forward a year: you just move one year from the totally untransitioned state
to the totally transitioned state.

That's huge. Anyone who does something that delays the transition one day is
basically pretty much committing the Pulse night club shooting and the Sandy
Hook shooting.

Now, another question: if a self-driving Uber slams into a group of children
crossing the street, how much do you anticipate that to delay the transition
to self-driving cars?

There's also a hidden assumption that getting inferior products on the road as
quickly as possible is a necessary step in order to start iterating as quickly
as possible. A day of clean room testing is worth some small fraction of a day
of real world testing. I don't quite dispute that point, but just stating it
explicitly.

~~~
Dylan16807
Safety standards that delay the transition by a week might also save one
person per day from being hit by a beta car during the transition period. You
can't just tally deaths on one side and ignore the other.

------
cjensen
Genius? If you hurt someone on the road by doing something explicitly illegal
which you have been explicitly warned against doing, you are looking at
massive financial liability to victims and potential involuntary manslaughter
charges against executives.

TechCrunch's suggestion that this is the thin edge of a wedge to get to do
self-driving without regulation is preposterous. There is no future reality in
which the Department of Transportation does not strictly regulate self-driving
vehicles.

~~~
Kiro
It's about the public's perception as well though.

~~~
sharemywin
Although to me there's a big difference between "innovating" on bureaucracy
and ignoring "public safety"

~~~
rhino369
Yea the laws uber broke were mostly bad regulations that nobody cared about
and ultimately didn't harm anyone (other than in a competition harms
incumbents).

But beta testing their cars on real streets could lead to disaster. Even from
a non-legal PR risk perspective, it's dicey.

If one of these things runs over a cute kid, the attempt to skirt the law will
backfire. That said challenging the law isn't necessarily skirting the law,
but that's how techcrunch is portraying it. I'm too lazy to read the docket of
the case.

~~~
Animats
Like minimum wage laws. Right.

~~~
icebraining
There they just followed the existing model of taxis.

------
Animats
Not really. The CA DMV can suspend or revoke a self-driving permit for bad
driving, as with any other driver's license.

 _§ 227.36. Refusal, Suspension, Revocation of Manufacturer’s Testing Permit_

 _The department may refuse an application for a Manufacturer’s Testing
Permit, or for the renewal of a Manufacturer’s Testing Permit, and may suspend
or revoke a Manufacturer’s Testing Permit:_

 _(a) For a violation of Vehicle Code section 38750 or this Article._

 _(b) For any act or omission of the manufacturer or one of its agents,
employees, contractors or designees which the department finds makes the
conduct of autonomous vehicle testing on public roads by the manufacturer an
unreasonable risk to the public._

It's pretty straightforward. This works just like regular bad driving
enforcement. There are now two reports of Uber self-driving cars running red
lights and complaints about bad turns through bike lanes, so DMV can
reasonably deny a permit. Google doesn't seem to have those problems.

[1]
[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/d48f347b-8815-458e...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/d48f347b-8815-458e-9df2-5ded9f208e9e/adopted_txt.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&amp;CONVERT_TO=url&amp;CACHEID=d48f347b-8815-458e-9df2-5ded9f208e9e)

~~~
bertil
Exactly this.

A friend of mine is a reckless driver, who think of himself as a rally pilot.
He often drives at twice the speed limit, passes other cars when there’s a
continuous line, etc. After a wedding dinner, (where he drunk more than
enough) he announced he was driving home. I had to ask:

\- Are you sure you should be doing this?

\- Yeah, even with a glass or two (I counted a good half-dozen) I’m a better
driver than 90% on the road anyway…

\- I mean, that might get points off your license. [He had mentioned losing
some during the dinner.]

\- Nah, it’s OK: I don’t have a license anymore, so I have no points to lose.
I’m smart like that, you see?

I agree with TechCrunch: Uber is smart like that too.

------
m0nty
So Uber are on course to make a huge (multi-billion dollar) loss this year,
and on top of that they choose a course of action which could lead to jail-
time, might kill someone, and result in massive civil liability. They also
make autonomous vehicles look like a half-baked kludge with no real place on
the roads and might even cause some regulators to ban them indefinitely.
Brilliant.

~~~
Animats
They're on course for having a car pulled over, the cop asks for their self-
driving permit (SFPD probably has briefed their people on this by now), they
don't have it, the driver is arrested and the car gets towed to the impound.
Routine enforcement.

If it's an accident, it's much worse for Uber.

------
peterbonney
This is ridiculous analysis. If Uber loses (or wins) this DMV "permission"
battle they don't magically win the "existence" battle. The state never
forfeits its right to challenge whatever it wants to challenge, whenever it
wants to challenge it. And if the state loses in court it can even change the
law and fight again - no private entity has that power.

To the extent Uber is doing something clever, it probably has something to do
with avoiding having to spend $150 for every entity or person that wants to
buy a self-driving car and rent it out through Uber. It is certainly _not_
that they have found a brilliant way to sidestep a legal battle with
regulators.

~~~
kuschku
> And if the state loses in court it can even change the law and fight again -
> no private entity has that power.

Sadly, not at all – Uber will just sue in some court of some trade deal, and
find a way to get around that. Just like so many companies have done before.

------
danieltillett
This sort of behaviour by Uber seems to signal an internal desperation. High
risk gambles are what you take when you are a scrapy startup with nothing much
to lose, not a multi-billion dollar business.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Wall Street did this for decades. Don't underestimate the human factor.

~~~
danieltillett
...and didn't that end well in 2008.

------
stevenh
Human drivers can feel relatively safe around other cars because of mutually
assured destruction. You are both afraid of dying if you make a significant
mistake.

Self-driving cars will never have this fear holding them back from making
mistakes. They don't care if they die. How can you feel safe around that? You
could argue there is actually an incentive to let them crash once in awhile,
because the valuable real world data will be phoned home and used to improve
the product for the small price of a human life.

Once corruption sets in down the road, cars with autopilot capabilities will
simplify kidnapping and assassination. Simply activate the backdoor remote
piloting feature and crash your target's car (or the Uber car they're a
passenger in) into a tree at 70 mph, or lock the doors and drive to a pickup
location to complete the kidnapping.

Driving in a traditional car wouldn't protect the target, because a group with
ubiquitous optional remote control over self-driving cars could also force
surrounding cars to enter kamikaze mode and ram the target off the road.

Governments will demand some kind of backdoor like this at some point. It's
not a question of if, but when. At that point, we'll have to trust that
they'll never abuse it (lol) and that no third parties will ever be able to
hack it remotely.

Even if you think the government is your friend, the first worm using a remote
code execution exploit that hops from car to car via Bluetooth and activates
its payload on a specific date will be able to kill tens of millions of
people.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I won't comment on the apocalypse scenarios you described, because the
possibility is obviously there. But regarding the MAD scenario on roads, I
believe with self-driving cars you're trading off ability to survive in _very_
rare cases (like split-second decision after reading the face of the driver
about to crash into you) for having the usual accident causes (speeding,
distracted driving) not happen.

My hope in the transition period is that the presence of self-driving cars on
roads will finally force the drivers to start obeying traffic laws - which
should pretty much eliminate the MAD consideration altogether.

------
Roritharr
I genuinely hope someone at their HQ has an explanation. This doesn't make
sense on any level at all from my PoV, but i'm not valued at 50bn$.

I would love to see some super smart twist on this, incompetence and hubris
becomes boring to watch fast.

------
jheriko
uber. i have nothing against improving these services, but doing it with such
blatant disregard to the law.

if this was just some guy on the street, or even most businesses the
authorities would come down on them like a ton of bricks... but its a silicon
valley posterchild so we don't.

its so difficult to see and not feel anger about it. if i don't do my due
diligence or act intelligently i feel uncomfortable like i'm taking a stupid
risk... why don't they?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe Uber is secretly in legislative pentesting business - working to probe
just how much laws they can break and still get away with it.

------
tarr11
Cycling and pedestrian advocates are speaking against self driving cars [1].

It's so much easier to fix software for "right hooks" then it is to fix human
drivers, who drive terribly in SF.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/19/uber-
self...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/19/uber-self-driving-
cars-bike-lanes-safety-san-francisco)

------
ijustdontgetit
Every time Uber is mentioned, it blows my mind how many people care about the
law at the expense of innovation.

According to google, 3,287 seem to die everyday on the road. I honestly don't
see those numbers happening when humans are taken out of the equation.

I've asked this before, but will ask it again:

Why be apart of tech if you want to follow the rules?

~~~
Dylan16807
The vast majority of Uber's activities have nothing to do with safety.

And the very basic laws around self-driving cars don't slow innovation in any
way I can see. Not everything is a dichotomy.

