
Uber dismissed warnings about its illegal self-driving test for months - JustSomeNobody
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/27/14698902/uber-self-driving-san-francisco-dmv-email-levandowski
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tlb
To quote a lawyer friend, "Break only one law at a time. If you have a dead
body in your trunk, be sure to use your turn signals."

The pragmatic reason for this is that the penalties and probability of getting
caught for a given crime are often inversely correlated. So if you commit a
small crime and a large crime simultaneously, you're likely to get caught for
the small crime and then they'll notice the large crime too.

Uber set out to break a set of laws that arguably needed breaking: those that
protect incumbent taxi services against competition. Calling their taxi
service a limo service to avoid anti-competitive regulations is a small crime.
But instead of learning the "one crime at a time" rule, they seem to have
learned "Hey, we can get away with crimes!"

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jfim
> they seem to have learned "Hey, we can get away with crimes!"

I'm not sure if it's really that. It seems that they're closer to having a
scorched-earth policy where they intentionally break the rules. If the
regulators step in and put some legislation that blocks Uber from operating,
it also blocks their competitors from operating as well. If not, then they win
by having their way and having a first mover advantage. Either way, they win
or their competitors lose.

That strategy seems to have worked very well for them in the US, but not as
much in other markets.

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unityByFreedom
Aren't there places in the US where Lyft is operating and Uber isn't? Like
Austin?

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erpellan
It's hard to play the scrappy upstart 'disrupt' card when you're a 50-billion
or so valued company who can afford to hire people who can tell you how not to
fuck up quite so incompetently.

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ziszis
How many ethical and legal violations will be until the CEO of Uber is fired?
If this were a public company, 1) the stock would have taken several hits and
2) he would have been out a long time ago.

A decade ago it was Worldcom and Enron and other giants. It is unfortunate
that the founder mythology has shifted some of the worst corporate behavior to
start-ups.

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samfisher83
The reason why Airbnb and Uber are working is because they found a loophole
with the law and skirting around it as much as they can. So are you going to
fire the guy for doing that?

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madeofpalk
"loophole with the law" is a very interesting way avoiding the fact that they
flat our broke the law in jurisdictions and reimbursed fines drivers incurred.

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stale2002
Well, the laws in question (forced taxi monopoly laws) were bad to begin with.

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Ntrails
Ah, so it's ok to break laws as long as you disagree with them? Because I have
some serious issues with the idea that [insert abhorrent thing] is wrong so
it'd be neat to just say it's a bad law and get on with doing it

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ionised
There is a case to be made for a form of civil disobedience involving
significant numbers of people breaking a law in an attempt to have it
repealed.

I personally break a few laws I just don't care for. Drugs laws to name one.
Nobody is taking my LSD from me and I imagine there are millions like me.

That said I don't agree with what Uber is doing. They are one company trying
to skirt the law.

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kedean
You can't invoke civil disobedience when a commerce is happening, because
civil disobedience is a symbolic act, meant to draw attention. As soon as
somebody is making money doing it, it's just breaking the law.

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ionised
That makes sense

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Bluestrike2
All of that over a $150 permit? They paid more in legal fees just to have
their attorneys (in-house or otherwise) open the DMV's regulations on the
subject, and all they got out of it was a decidedly antagonistic start to
their relationship with the regulatory body that will regulate them.

For some reason, I think their executive team's fondness for self-destructive
impulses is far more of an existential threat to Uber than coming in second in
rolling out autonomous vehicles.

~~~
vgt
Major requirement associated with getting that $150 permit is reporting
disengagement statistics, and, hence, showing up on this report:

[http://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14474800/waymo-self-
driving-d...](http://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14474800/waymo-self-driving-dmv-
disengagements)

~~~
petee
Ironically, all the effort to avoid regulation and oversight, will probably
lead to far more expensive lawsuits on the flip side - Run a red light now,
maybe hit a pedestrian later.

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stale2002
Not really. Red states like Arizona seem to like self driving cars just fine.

It is Californias loss, and other people's gain. The cars are going to be
tested, no matter what.

Self driving cars are already much safer than humans. The recent government
investigation of the Tesla self driving cars proved this (ten's of thousands
of self driving cars are already on the road right now) .

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greglindahl
Huh. Lots of car companies do their driverless tech testing in California.
Uber just doesn't like following rules that everyone else finds reasonable.

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stale2002
No, a couple companies test a dozen cars here and there.

Try that with a thousand and watch California lose its mind.

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bstar77
You work with the agencies you are beholden to, to determine if you are
working within the parameters they set- this should not be an antagonistic
relationship. Uber apparently does not believe in that sort of thing and are
arrogant enough to just go it alone. They will pay dearly for that hubris now.

Uber is just a disgusting company that I wish didn't exist. Fortunately they
have far more ethical competition to choose from.

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alphabettsy
The fact that they keep lying and getting caught regularly should be very
troubling to their investors. I could understand differences in definition,
but lying about what objectively happened is beyond that.

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wapz
Aren't they a private company? Do people keep investing after the company
takes off?

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hluska
Between investment and debt financing, Uber raised > $4 billion last year.

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wapz
Wow.. okay thanks.

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sandworm101
So are these uber guys the kids of Enron guys? The managment style, the
flouting of rules and decorum, seems very similar.

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sharkmerry
asking for forgiveness rather than permission is not something any company
should do when people's lives are at stake

