This is not how labor laws work. The role description needs to be fair. A employer cannot just shift all the blame to the employee. The employer needs to take the needed actions and provide the needed equipment and procedures so the employee can do her task.
But, let's see what the result of the trial is. I am not an expert and the trial will clarify this point.
"Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk decided in March 2019 that Uber itself had not committed a crime in Herzberg's death."
Labor laws are irrelevant. They were grossly negligent in operating a vehicle, which is the domain of criminal, not labor, law.
Principal-agent aspects of criminal law may also provide liability for the employer, though apparently they haven't been charged. Which, to the extent they could be, is unfortunate because it is only employer liability, civil and/or criminal, that is likely to substantively effect the likelihood of recurrence, because while the individual is absolutely culpable, it's not the kind of behavior where individual criminal liability is likely to be an effective deterrent without better employer supervision, which won't happen unless she employer has a reason to pay for that cost.
I see e.g. cruise and waymo SDVs around SF with only one person on board. What of those?
My very layperson protocol would be "watch the road while the car is in motion, only use tablet when car is safely parked". My understanding is that SDVs store all the data it collects, so I see no reason to require operating a tablet while the vehicle is in motion. Correct me if I'm wrong.
SF is also an easier place to be watching an SDV in the sense that there's more happening to keep your mind occupied (weird intersections, construction, people doing stupid things). It's a lot easier to lose focus when you're watching a car drive itself around deserted highways in the middle of the night.
I can't say much about what their actual protocols are supposed to be, I can only offer my personal anecdata. I do occasionally see cruise cars around the Japan Town area with only one person in the car. They often park at the safeway across geary. The waymo cars, I see them roaming around closer to downtown, also with single driver, though they don't seem to concentrate in any particular area that I can tell. I also occasionally see unbranded SDVs, sometimes w/ two people, sometimes w/ one. Not sure which company those are from.
> SF is also an easier place to be watching an SDV
Well, from a regulatory perspective, one shouldn't be able to get away with saying "well I was not in a crowded area to keep me attentive, that's why the accident happened". I'd even argue that if the job involves looking at a tablet while the car is motion, then being in a crowded area would make things _more_ dangerous.
The last PR piece seems to omit that. Next piece maybe we will find out the driver was watching hulu on their phone on their lap... while reclassifying objects on the AI tablet also on their lap.
Because if the status quo is to poke at tablets in moving vehicles, how is anyone ok w/ cruise/waymo/whatever cars driving around SF?
California DMV has shown a lot better oversight of self-driving than Arizona. They had deregistered several Uber owned vehicles in 2016 [1], and have some reasonably specific rules. It's much more OK in SF than AZ.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/22/uber_selfdriving_cars...
Extreme case: Your employer tells you to stay alert in a super-boring job for 8 straight hours or else a person can die or whatever. But that may be an impossibility due to how our brain works.
I'd like to know how many hours was he sitting there and how often did he have to intervene that day /week /month. Uber, maybe, should have had another one checking now and then on drivers. Say one for 10 drivers...
But if you mean watching a TV show to distract themselves then not in a million years.
Uber's training or setup may well prove to be negligent... but this employee took the active, conscious step of watching a TV show on her phone when her entire job was to supervise the car's driving and safety of others.
If that's not criminal negligence, I really don't know what is.
I think the TSA also keeps scanners on their toes by digitally placing contraband in the bag pictures at various intervals to make sure the scanner is able to stay engaged (and maybe to get some metrics on hit/miss rates). Maybe these supervised self driving cars need to project a deer jumping into the road and log the driver's response or something.
Edit: there was another post by [redacted] but it disappeared, it does not even show as deleted, weird.
It said: "This isn't some ride along in a consumer grade EV. They were gathering data to program the car with. The emergency braking systems were not active. The person that was supposed to be monitoring the vehicle knew this."
It would probably be more respectful not to copy what they posted along with their username. Actually, I think we'd better redact the username from your quote. People sometimes have important personal reasons for deleting things. The odds aren't high that it matters but the impact could be high if it did.
People sometimes have important personal reasons for deleting things but this does not mean anything. It is not as if "x posted y on twitter and deleted it afterwards" or "the page was edited/deleted, here is an archive.org link" is uncommon on HN, nor it is as if a stalker would not be able to scrap HN posts of someone instantly as they were posted.
> it disappears.
In my experience they show as [deleted] but I guess this is only for posts that have replies.
I'm sure it wasn't that big a deal and I'm sure your intentions were good, but I'm also pretty sure most HN users would want us to protect them in this way, if only for the rare occasion on which it actually is a big deal.
Kind of. Technically, posts that have replies can't be deleted, so what sometimes happens is the poster edits their post and replaces all the text with "[deleted]".
Which should also be prohibited, because it's just as destructive. You shouldn't be able to edit a post with replies either.
Yes, ideally I would just do more revising before posting a comment the first time, but I don't seem to work that way.
I think the two-hour window is a good compromise, and if anything I really wish it was longer. Yes it has downsides, but I really think they're outweighed by the good.