I hadn't heard of this before, so I just googled it and read the top half-dozen news stories in addition to Uber's own blog. And honestly, I don't see that Uber did anything wrong. They opened with a statement offering condolences to the family. They then confirmed that the accident did not involve an active driver ("a vehicle or provider doing a trip on the Uber system"). They followed this up by urging the police to release information on the driver. So it sounds like they could confirm no active trips were involved in the accident, but had no way to find out if a driver without a trip was involved.
Then later (I think on Jan 2nd?) they updated their blog post, presumably in response to details of the driver being released, to confirm that the driver was an Uber driver (just not one on an active trip), and that he has been deactivated.
Then it closes by repeating the condolences to the family.
I agree that it would have been nice if Uber could have confirmed that the driver worked for them initially, but it's not obvious that they were even in a position to find that out before details on the driver were released.
Desperate attempts to wash themselves of liability.
If a Yellow Cab driver killed someone do you think they would deny, admit and then caveat with 'but he doesnt really work for us because he didnt have a passenger in the car and his lunch break was coming up blah blah blah'
>If a Yellow Cab driver killed someone do you think they would deny, admit and then caveat with
Yes, if a yellow cab driver hit someone with his own car while he was not working (which is what happened here), yellow cab would very much deny any liability.
Then later (I think on Jan 2nd?) they updated their blog post, presumably in response to details of the driver being released, to confirm that the driver was an Uber driver (just not one on an active trip), and that he has been deactivated.
Then it closes by repeating the condolences to the family.
I agree that it would have been nice if Uber could have confirmed that the driver worked for them initially, but it's not obvious that they were even in a position to find that out before details on the driver were released.