As far as Uber being negligent for putting an easily-distracted human in charge of a car that ostensibly (even if they claim otherwise) needs little attention, I totally agree they are negligent. The reason for that is I believe it's unreasonable to expect a human driver to pay 100% attention to the road while in a car that only requires 5% attention to the road. However, I also believe as well as telling the driver "pay attention to the road 100% of the time" she would have been told "Do not use your phone while driving" which I believe is a totally reasonable request and expectation. With this assumption and if the blame has to fall on only a single party then I think this news puts it squarely on the driver.