Report: Uber driver kills 6-year-old pedestrian, raises questions about company’s liability [w/video]
Filed under: Government/Legal, Technology
On New Year’s Eve, an Uber driver struck a family of three as they were crossing a San Francisco street. The driver, 57-year-old Syed Muzzaraf, turned into the crosswalk without yielding and struck six-year-old Sophia Liu, her brother and her mother, San Francisco District Supervisor Jane Kim told Autoblog‘s sister website, Tech Crunch. Sophia was killed and her mother remains in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital.
The incident has raised questions about the nature of insurance for ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. For example, in the incident that killed Sophia Liu, Uber has already essentially denied liability, claiming Muzzaraf wasn’t “providing services on the Uber system at the time of the accident,” (we’ve included the full statement from Uber below). It’s not entirely clear, though, whether Muzzaraf was merely waiting on a job or whether his employment with Uber was merely circumstantial in this situation.
In a traditional taxi, there’s coverage at all times regardless of whether the driver is between fares or heading back to the garage. Typically, all Uber contractors are required to carry commercial car insurance, which is supplemented by $1 million in coverage from the company, according to Tech Crunch.
This isn’t the case in California, though, where Uber has been given permission to operate cars without the commercial-grade coverage, meaning that in the case of Muzzafar – who remained on the scene and was cooperative with police, but was still booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter – we don’t know if he had anything beyond personal insurance for the Honda Pilot he was driving.
With ride-sharing and taxi apps growing in popularity, though, situations like the one in San Francisco are (unfortunately) only going to become more common. We’ve assembled a poll down below to gauge your thoughts on the matter. Scroll down, register your vote and then hop into Comments and let us know what you think. We’ve also included the full statement from Uber, regarding the incident that killed Sophia Liu and video of the news report on the incident from the local ABC affiliate down below.
Uber driver kills 6-year-old pedestrian, raises questions about company’s liability [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 05 Jan 2014 17:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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