Uber’s ballot measure would protect ride-sharing companies, not passengers, from safety lapses

A Santa Barbara woman was killed by an Uber Eats driver who was at a speed of 120 miles per hour in an intoxicated state, the family’s complaint says. The driver already had a criminal record and was on probation for a second DUI. But he was good enough for Uber.

UberThe inadequate background check system has led to other lawsuits and led to several New York Times stories portraying Uber as cheap and sloppy when it comes to background checks and safety, for allowing violent offenders to drive and ignoring customer complaints.

Instead of making safety improvements, Uber is making a political investment in the form of a ballot measure in California.

Uber’s initiative will protect careless drivers any type of motor vehicle accident a case that would benefit corporations and insurance companies to the tune of billions of dollars each year.

The proposed law would also limit victims’ medical recovery and their freedom to contract with a lawyer to take on the megabillion-dollar corporation and its insurance companies.

Uber’s propaganda claims that its initiative will protect people from “billboard lawyers”, but this is far from the truth. Uber’s real goal is to get richer by avoiding liability and driving a wedge between victims and lawyers.

Here’s how Uber’s “evil genius plan” works.

Most injury victims and families cannot afford an hourly attorney. Contingency attorneys only get paid if they win and often invest years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money into a case.

Uber’s proposed law says victims should keep 75% of the “total recovery,” which sounds like 25% goes to paying their lawyers, but that’s not true.

When accident victims need treatment and rehabilitation, providers treat them with the understanding that they will be paid when the case is closed, or “on lien.” These medical bills are non-reimbursable costs on the initiative and will come out of the 25 percent that will finance attorneys’ fees.

This means that in many serious injury cases, the more lawyers do to help clients get care, the less they will be paid. A $1 million serious injury settlement, for example, could result in medical liens and bills in excess of $250,000, and the attorneys will receive nothing.

Uber’s law also makes it almost impossible to find reputable doctors to provide treatment for constipation.

Raising the stakes even higher, Uber has announced it will put its self-driving cars and robotics on California roads in late 2026, after the election.

In Arizona in 2018, an Uber robot was the first to do so kill a pedestrian. Report of the National Transportation Safety Board said Uber has an “inadequate safety culture,” and noted that the Uber car’s system detected the pedestrian six seconds before impact but did not apply the brakes. reduces the number of expensive sensors on the car before the accident.

“Fully autonomous vehicles will need to be driven hundreds of millions of miles, and sometimes billions of miles, to demonstrate their safety in terms of fatalities and injuries,” said a RAND Corporation report. Uber’s partner, Nuro, has only covered 210,540 miles in California, according to a 2024 DMV report.

To be clear, Uber’s political strategy has nothing to do with helping people, and everything to do with protecting itself and getting rich, just as it’s unleashing dangerous technology on California’s roads.

Uber and its insurers could hire lawyers without restriction and not be penalized for court delays or frivolous defenses.

The proposed Uber law would give the corporation a license to kill by making it nearly impossible for most injury victims to obtain legal representation that matches Uber’s lawyers — blocking fair access to our civil justice system when a person is injured, maimed or killed.