Uber Not Criminally Liable in Death of Woman Hit by Self-Driving Car - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/700801945/uber-not-criminally-liable-in-death-of-woman-hit-by-self-driving-car-says-prosec <comment><USER2> > In the six seconds before impact, the self-driving system classified the > pedestrian as an unknown object, then as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle, a > preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board explained. > While the system identified that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to > mitigate a collision, the system was set up to not activate emergency > braking when under computer control.

The prosecutor made the wrong call here. This part is absolutely criminal negligence. Putting a "self driving" car out there that doesn't have emergency braking enabled (apparently because it creates too many false positives) is an unjustifiable risk. Working emergency braking should be the first thing perfected, before the computer gets to control the car.

<comment><USER3> Arizona law is pretty friendly to motorists. Generally speaking, you're not supposed to jaywalk and when you do, you are taking your life in your own hands and the car that hits you is not liable. It's even worse for the pedestrian -- even at an intersection if you walk quickly onto oncoming traffic you do not have the right of way and are responsible for anything that happens to you. It's just not the case that the car is assumed to be at fault in situations like these -- the pedestrian is assumed to be at fault. The pedestrian is not automatically given the right of way and is basically never given the right of way outside of an intersection. This is different than the laws in other states like California.

Situations like drunk driving can make a difference, but in this case that's a hard claim to make. Maybe if the car was swerving out of its way to hit her, you could make that case. But arguing that it wasn't doing enough to stop -- that's a tough sell given AZ law. The car had the right of way, it was not acting maliciously, and she walked right in front of it. According to AZ law, asking the car to make what might be a dangerous last second swerve into another lane or slamming on the breaks to avoid hitting her is not a legal obligation as these are unsafe maneuvers. There might be another car behind them or other cars/pedestrians alongside them so the law in AZ doesn't require these types of high risk actions to avoid hitting pedestrians that walk right in front of oncoming traffic.

Moreover this person was jaywalking at night in an area without street lights, without even bothering to look both ways, across a median, wearing a black hoodie, through a high speed road right in front of a car that had proper headlights and was going a steady speed.

Anyone familiar with AZ law knew that Uber wasn't going to be charged. You may think the law itself is wrong and that cars should be legally required to take last second high risk evasive maneuvers. These are all tradeoffs to which reasonable people will disagree, but changing the law is the job of the Arizona legislature and not of the prosecutor, who made the correct decision, even if it seems like the wrong decision to you.

<comment><USER4> Minor correction: the area was actually very well lit with street lights. The Uber dashcam video was just poor quality so it gave the impression it was really dark.

[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said- uber-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/police-chief-said-uber-victim- came-from-the-shadows-dont-believe-it/)

<comment><USER5> This prove that the area is well lit currently, but not necessarily that it was very well lit the day and hour of the accident.

It was a very notorious case. I would expect authorities silently improving the lit in the area and taking other correction measures in all those months.

<comment><USER6> I actually used to bike that road all the time 3-4 years ago. The bridge section before it could be disturbingly dark, but the point where she was crossing was decently lit, as I recall. It was also somewhere I would never consider crossing, mostly because there was a crosswalk just up ahead.

Still, if I absolutely had to it was definitely an intersection to watch carefully for cars when crossing, but one with fairly long sightlines for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is potentially precedent as a legal blocker for public adoption of self- driving cars. If I am to serve a 1 year prison sentence for faulty code or a deprecated LIDAR sensor, I don't see in what scenario I would be willing to leave my fate in the hands of a self-driving car manufacturer. Just as in the case of a chauffeur, if they are driving and commit vehicular manslaughter, I would not expect to be deemed guilty.

It seems to me that it would be the benefit of self-driving car companies to own up to liability as it is to their benefit of achieving widespread adoption. For example, Volvo is in line with this idea and has publicly stated that they would accept full liability in fully autonomous operation modes[0].

In this case, I do think that some liability lies with the driver - as they were tasked specifically with prevent situations like this. What is not clear is whether or not this task is even humanly feasible given reaction times, and based off of this, whether or not Uber has been criminally negligible. Given this, I am surprised that the prosecutor seems to have absolved Uber of any blame.

[0] [https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en- gb/media/pressrele...](https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en- gb/media/pressreleases/167975/us-urged-to-establish-nationwide-federal- guidelines-for-autonomous-driving)

<comment><USER8> > If I am to serve a 1 year prison sentence for faulty code

I wonder why would a programmer go and work on a code when he is always in danger of going to prison for every mistake he makes. We all know that bugs in software happen and it's impossible to write bug free code

<comment><USER9> Architects and engineers seem to go to work everyday knowing that if they are criminally negligent they could face prison.

<comment><USER10> My apologies for potentially hijacking this, but... this is exactly why the term "software engineer" bothers me. Yes, the software you write isn't likely to cause a shopping mall to collapse on a crowd of people, but there can be huge financial and societal responsibility here, and yet, almost every software license in existence completely disclaims that. Engineering comes with a tremendous amount of ethical and legal responsibility.

<comment><USER11> But innovation!

Fail fast!

...sorry for the sarcasm but this is a message student engineers internalize in part because it is pushed by companies they want to work for but can't explain why. They don't have strong boundaries between why it might he a justifiable philosophy for Facebook but not for Boeing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A woman on a road was killed. By a car with no driver.

There was a person sitting in the driver's seat, but that person was in no way engaged in maintaining safe operation. That person was hired by Uber.

As the judge, therefore, I would certainly assign -most- liability to Uber for putting that screw-off behind the wheel in the first place. Uber's driverless car killed a woman.

The charge would be negligent homicide.

<comment><USER13> How do you feel about the Amtrak engineer being charged in the Philadelphia derailment? Does Amtrak deserve most liability for putting the engineer in charge of the train, or does the engineer deserve the blame for failing the most basic duties of their job?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr- gridlock/wp/2018/02/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr- gridlock/wp/2018/02/06/criminal-charges-reinstated-against-engineer-in- deadly-2015-philadelphia-amtrak-crash/)

<comment><USER12> I'm not familiar with the details there. IIRC, the engineer was going around a curve much faster than it was rated for.

Whatever. Failing to detect that an employee is not fit to do a job which potentially jeopardizes many lives is a very serious failure. I might -want- to ask which executive the company will expect to do the time.

Airlines and railroads seem to prefer to blame their operators, particularly when the operators are killed and unable to defend themselves. In this case, however, the vehicle had no operator to blame.

<comment><USER14> The article mentions the negligent operator watching a TV show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let's take a look at some of the ingredients that led to this:

1) A pedestrian crossing the street likely expected an approaching driver to see them and slow down. Typical behavior on the part of the average pedestrian and the average driver, whether it's a misdemeanor or not.

2) An engineer at Uber made the decision to put tech on the road without emergency braking capabilities, likely using the justification that a safety driver would be there to intervene when needed.

3) A safety driver in an autonomous vehicle that behaves the right way 99% of the time grows complacent.

The pedestrian may have been jaywalking and the safety driver may have been abdicating their duties. The safety driver especially isn't an innocent actor here. But the party who has the most responsibility is by far the engineers and managers at Uber.

This set of circumstances was completely foreseeable, but they still decided to take the risk and put this technology out on the roads. I for one don't want to be a part of Uber, or anyone else's great experiments. Spend the money, spend the time, and figure this out in a controlled environment before subjecting the rest of us to the negative impacts of your selfish ambition. Someone at Uber deserves time in prison for this.

<comment><USER16> While I agree that disabling the emergency braking was a foolish and irresponsible decision, and the most important single technical failure leading to this tragic outcome, I don't see prison time as a reasonable response, as I doubt that there was a malicious disregard for safety. If the persons most responsible for that decision still think they did no wrong, however... I'm not sure what the ideal response would be.

Beyond that, I do not want to see an extension of the practice where low-level employees take all the blame for a corporate culture that encourages bad behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On one hand, I think Uber was reckless and wantonly created the conditions for this incident.

On the other hand, I don't want this to be the death knell for autonomous driving experiments.

On the gripping hand, it's possible that a large settlement might have been the best outcome from this tragedy for the family of the woman in question. They gain nothing from Uber's criminal liability. (edit: clarity)

<comment><USER18> I saw a post on Reddit at the time of this incident, from someone who claimed to be a former Uber backup driver. The claim was that Uber was too strict with regards to cell phones, and that if you were caught interacting with your phone while on the job you were immediately terminated.

I'd like to know how true this is, and if there is a better source for this claim.

<comment><USER19> > The claim was that Uber was too strict with regards to cell phones, and that > if you were caught interacting with your phone while on the job you were > immediately terminated.

Why is that too strict? Distracted driving is rapidly becoming the biggest problem for MVCs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> After all these stories I strongly believe that "self-driving, except when it's not" is even worse than manually driving, because supervising a computer is not too far from a driving instructor supervising a student driver; most of the time it's OK, but you have to be extremely alert to catch the times when it makes a fatal mistake. On the other hand, if you're "manually" driving, you are fully in control of and can anticipate the situation, thinking ahead with what's next. A self-driving car, like a student driver, won't tell you what it's going to do and ask whether that's OK --- it just does and you have to be _very_ alert to instantly take control to correct when things go wrong.

Autopilots work in planes because the operators are extremely well-trained, and the reaction times needed are measured in seconds or even minutes. In a car, it's less than a second.

<comment><USER21> I think there's actually some debate about how just the right amount of automation can be dangerous in planes. Automation works great in nominal conditions but can leave pilots unprepared to handle bad situations.

There was a really interesting article I read about this regarding the Air France plane that crashed a few years ago (I think it was this: [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air- france-...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france- flight-447-crash)). Similar things even came to play with the recent Lion Air crash, although there was also a lot of negligence and crappy maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > While the system identified that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to > mitigate a collision, the system was set up to not activate emergency > braking when under computer control.

> Instead, the car's system relied on the human operator to intervene as > needed. "The system is not designed to alert the operator," the report > notes.

How are the not negligent for this specifically?

<comment><USER23> The law doesn't require automatic brakes and alerts on cars. Think about how many clunkers those laws would make illegal. You can't hold Uber to different legal standards, but we can certainly say they were negligent from a moral standpoint

<comment><USER22> > The law doesn't require automatic brakes and alerts on cars.

The law isn't written for the case when the car is under its own control. The driver is assumed to be in control of the vehicle. However, if the car is also _a_ driver, neutering its ability stop, or even ask for assistance, in an emergency should be tantamount to disability the human driver's brakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The Arizona Republic has reported that the driver, 44-year-old Rafaela > Vasquez, was streaming the television show The Voice in the vehicle in the > minutes before the crash.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised any more as even the drivers of the non- self-driving cars do the same sometimes. It's scary how often, when I look in the rear-view mirror, I see drives behind me looking down at their phones. This is one of the reasons I almost stopped driving.

</comment><comment><USER25> Most driving is done by humans. Humans are terrible at it and kill people unnecessarily all the time. That's the standard to beat. Speaking as someone who rides a bike on city streets, I really don't give a shit how many people Uber kills, as long as it's less than human drivers would. This whole thread smells like Monday morning quarterbacking and people throwing aside reason under stereotype threat. (Techies are in love with technology, techies are in thrall to startup narratives and oblivious to social responsibility. Everyone's anxious to disprove that.)

In fact, the mistake Uber made here was relying on a human being to do a job that is routine and boring the vast bulk of the time but occasionally requires life-saving decisions that depend on attentive awareness of the surroundings. That's the same mistake our entire civilization makes a million times a day. The fact that the operator had fewer responsibilities than a normal driver probably magnified the problem, but it's the same problem that makes driving fundamentally dangerous. She thought she was doing a good enough job and then oops, guess not, somebody's dead.

That happens every day without robot drivers involved. The standards we hold autonomous driving technology to should reflect this insane status quo.

</comment><comment><USER26> My thoughts go out to her family. And the many many people who die every day because of reckless drivers and accidents. Driverless or not. Really sucks to lose someone due to no fault of their own (other than being there).

To add, driverless or not, most who kill others using a car are not criminally liable. Often times not even liable beyond what the state minimum is. Unless the victim sues for personal assets. So in California, that's 100k. Which is one of the lowest in the USA.

<comment><USER27> > to lose someone due to no fault of their own

? She walked in front of a car on the expressway in the dark.

<comment><USER28> You have a reasonable point that the victim probably bears some responsibility for crossing in the middle of a block in the dark, but I'm pretty sure that it was a divided city street with a 35 MPH speed limit rather than what is typically thought of as an expressway: "the preliminary police investigation determined that the car was speeding—going 38 mph in a 35 mph zone when the crash occurred" ([https://www.curbed.com/transportation/2018/3/20/17142090/ube...](https://www.curbed.com/transportation/2018/3/20/17142090/uber- fatal-crash-driverless-pedestrian-safety)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Unbelievable. I wonder how many other self driving cars are out there designed to not brake even when they clearly detect an object in their path. It's ridiculous to rely on a human to intervene in such situations. This was a completely preventable homicide, yet Uber gets away with it. As I've said before, the easiest way to get away with murder is to commit it under the protection of a corporation. True, this is manslaughter, but the principle still stands. I bet they will go after the driver now and try to place blame on her despite her having an impossible job that should simply not exist because it can't be carried out. So they get away with manslaughter and a precedent is set for other car companies that no matter how negligent your system and operations are, you can kill people and get away with it as long as you find a patsy to sit behind the wheel and take the blame. With this kind of attitude, I hope self driving cars never make it to market. I no longer think they will be safer than human drivers because there is no incentive for these companies to make them safe, let alone safer.

<comment><USER30> > I bet they will go after the driver now and try to place blame on her > despite her having an impossible job

What's impossible about watching the street and hitting the breaks if necessary, while testing a prototype self-driving car? I would say if you can't even do that, you shouldn't be in that seat.

This isn't the case where just one person is responsible. The system shouldn't have been configured that way. The driver should've been alert. The woman shouldn't have crossed the road like that. _Everyone_ was negligent.

<comment><USER31> It happened because one company was greedy, and negligent, - and has the money to pay the bill. The question is, will the jury really make them pay.

<comment><USER13> It happened just as much because one driver/monitor wasn't doing their job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Those cars were nowhere near ready to be on the roads. And given how fast the program spun up there's no way the drivers were properly trained and vetted. I personally had several run-ins with the Uber cars in San Francisco before they got their California registrations revoked. I worked on 3rd in soma and saw them out as I would walk to lunch. They didn't even try to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks during right turn on red (when pedestrians clearly have right of way). I had more than one near miss. I shouted at the driver and he grabbed the wheel in panic. He went around the block to try again and the car did exactly the same thing. It was like they were blind to anything smaller than a car. Uber knew it too, because the failure to yield was reported to Uber in person at their garage on 3rd and Harrison. Uber (and anyone who behaves like that) has no business running a self-driving program. If they start the program back up I guarantee they will continue to kill pedestrians. If you see one coming get away quick. I speak from personal experience and I'm not joking even a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder why Uber (and other self-driving car companies) don't have remote employees monitoring the road who can take over in case the appointed driver doesn't react quickly enough.

The problem with these driver-assisted self driving cars is that the driver is unlikely to be paying attention at any given time since the system is 99% reliable.

By adding remote monitoring, you could even have multiple people monitoring each car. It might be impossible to safely steer the car from a remote location, but they could surely activate the breaks and/or trigger other simple directives to drastically decrease a fatalistic collision.

Given that the average driver reaction time in a car collision is 2.3s [1], I doubt network latency would pose much of a problem, and cost surely isn't an issue for these companies. A remote person could also use the car's cameras to gain a superior field of vision (especially at night time) when compared to the in-car driver.

[1] [https://copradar.com/redlight/factors/IEA2000_ABS51.pdf](https://copradar.com/redlight/factors/IEA2000_ABS51.pdf)

<comment><USER20> If someone sitting in the vehicle can lose attention, there is not much hope for someone watching from afar on a TV (even if you're streaming at something like 4k 120fps --- which would be an _immense_ amount of bandwidth to handle for each car --- it's still not much more immersive than watching someone playing a driving game.)

<comment><USER33> Maybe they can make it more like a video game, where you're constantly saving cars from collisions, and you don't know which is a simulation and which is real. Give them bonuses based on what percentage of collisions they successfully deter.

<comment><USER34> And let's have Facebook moderators be shown a small percentage of images known to be of rape or beheadings just to test if they're flagging images correctly. You see how that might be a bad idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Interaction between humans and AI is far from perfect. It seems that it would be easier for the people to adapt to AI rather than the opposite. I feel that someday every traffic participant (including pedestrians) will be required to carry tracking device. These devices will communicate together and prohibit or allow actions, e.g. making a turn or crossing a road. Eventually they will make traffic rules as we know today, obsolete. No traffic lights, no road signs and no crossings anymore. Every action will controlled by the device. And, of course, they will automatically report and fine law-breakers.

Is this the bright future of the humankind? Or is this a setting for a new dystopian book?

</comment><comment><USER36> Interesting reading the article, from a risk perspective I would think Uber would have assessed the risks associated with using an Uber self-driving solution. Particularly mitigating automated controls to stop the car in the event it detects an emergency, given it has this capability.

But I agree with the verdict, it's just strange that the vehicle has the ability to detect a potential collision but cannot apply emergency braking to prevent it.

<comment><USER29> Of course, the prosecutor is judge and jury in this case because they are not pressing charges. I'm almost certain uber would be held liable by any jury who heard that they intentionally turned off the braking that could have saved this woman's life. Then again, it is Arizona so it's not surprising that this is not even being prosecuted. Uber must be bringing in a ton of money to the state there to get off so easily.

<comment><USER37> I'm not so sure. Uber's defense here amounts to blaming the safety driver for the crash. They can argue that their actions improved the safety of the self- driving car (by reducing erratic movements due to false positive) so long as the safety driver is performing their job properly. Absent a smoking gun email that says "yep, we know this is unsafe, we don't care" (basically the Ford Pinto scenario), I don't think a guilty verdict is near-certain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> and this ladies and gentlemen is a major reason why the US is the best place in the world to do business and specifically bleeding edge stuff.

</comment><comment><USER39> Blame the driver... of course the driver was told that the car drove itself... he was watching a show on his phone when it happened so Uber is putting the blame on him.

I don't think the driver was trained properly to drive in that semi-automated driving system. Is the fault lying with him or is Uber just trying to lay the blame on him to avoid paying anything.

<comment><USER22> Trains have had dead man's switches for nearly 50 years at least. You can't give people the job of paying attention if there is nothing to pay attention to 80%, 90% of the time. It's not reasonable to me to expect someone to be at peak alertness while doing nothing at all.

<comment><USER40> It is reasonable, however, that they not be watching a cell phone when they're being paid to be a backup driver.

The optics for the driver were really bad. They weren't just not paying attention, they weren't "just" eating and drinking (something accepted in American driving for the last 60 years), they weren't staring blankly into the desert, they didn't fall asleep. No, they were doing the one thing that has received the most public messaging for the last decade.

<comment><USER22> > The optics for the driver were really bad.

Oh don't get me wrong. I don't feel like the driver is blameless. I just mean that people not paying attention when they don't have to do anything isn't a new problem or one without what seems to be an adequate solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The law around this is so important. When your car hurts someone, who's fault is it? What about if its completely self driving like this one? What if there is a bugfix which you didn't apply? What if a software upgrade causes a crash? Lane assist caused you to swerve into something?

So many grey areas.

<comment><USER42> > When your car hurts someone, who's fault is it?

Fault is a loaded word. It's your liability. That's why you have insurance.

<comment><USER43> It's not always the driver's liability. Sometimes the pedestrian is at fault.

<comment><USER44> Sometimes the manufacturer is at fault, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Isn't most of the point of computers driving us so they can react to things we can't? I dont know why that bit would be turned off... Seems seriously problematic. Secondly, that looks like a really bad place to be pushing your bike at night.

<comment><USER46> When you are traveling at 60km/h+ no amount of computers can save you when even reacting instantly is not enough to slow down enough. Cars, self driving or not are extremely unsafe. Sure its a bad place to be walking at night but its quite problematic that we accept that walking around without looking both ways at every step is punishable by instant death.

<comment><USER47> If reacting instantly is not enough to slow down you were driving way too fast for the conditions, period. Defensive driving is a solved problem.

Unless you're talking about times where things really are out of the domain of the car - people jumping in front. But nobody really cares about that non problem.

Cars unsafe? Compared to what? Cheeseburgers? Most of the time when I drive, I don't die and I don't kill people. That seems pretty safe to me.

Regarding liability here in this case, I'm not sure where I sit, probably on the side where uber is liable. Their company, no amount of "it's new so it doesn't count" hand waiving will change my mind.

But the way I feel about this is my bias for strong consumer protections.

In curious what on earth the argument is that lets uber off the hook here.

<comment><USER46> >If reacting instantly is not enough to slow down you were driving way too fast for the conditions, period. Defensive driving is a solved problem.

Why does our law not reflect this? If this was a solved problem than all roads where people walk near would be 40km/h but instead we have people riding bikes and walking across roads with 60km/h traffic and they regularly get killed. You might be able to safely drive your car and not die most days but its shockingly common for people to die on our roads because we prioritize getting to work 30 seconds faster over reducing death.

<comment><USER47> It does reflect this.

Just to be clear what I meant by solved problem was that is has a known solution, it's not NP hard so to speak.

And while the problem is solved the implementation is far from widespread. Defensive driving lessons are not forced on everyone.

If you're a bus driver and rare end someone you lose your job specifically because you should have had enough distance to stop if they suddenly break.

> shockingly common

This phrase doesn't mean anything. Compared to what? People die all the time. Doesn't mean it's more common than the norm you expect which is what you're trying to convey.

I was actually thinking about this problem more and more.

There is no reason a self driving car can't prevent incidents like this. There isn't really any situation you want to crash into anything, allowing the car to do so is an error.

Defensive driving states if you can't see if there is something that might cross into the road around that blind corner then you need to reduce speed to the point you can safely edge around the corner and see what is oncoming. If that makes for a crappy drive then fix the roads, cut the trees down, make roads straighter and pedestrians more visible.

<comment><USER46> >Defensive driving states if you can't see if there is something that might cross into the road around that blind corner then you need to reduce speed to the point you can safely edge around the corner and see what is oncoming. If that makes for a crappy drive then fix the roads, cut the trees down, make roads straighter and pedestrians more visible.

Yes if self driving cars did this they would be fine but I doubt they will be built like this because people probably don't want their car to slam on the brakes every time someone is walking towards the edge of the street or slowing to a crawl every time they get to a corner. Virtually no drivers slow down to a safe speed when going around a corner its just 99.9% of the time there is nothing around the corner.

The uber car that killed that person was driving far above its ability. From what I read about it, these self driving cars are unable to tell if something in the distance is in the way or not at high speed so they assume that any stopped object in the distance must be not in the way because slamming on the brakes every time there is a tree on the side of the road is not ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Let say that in the future every car it is a Self-Driving Car. Which are more reliable and accidents are reduced by 99%. How to deal with that 1%? Whose fault is it? The manufacturer? The developer?

<comment><USER49> There will plenty of money to pay for the 12500 people that die because of those systems. (WHO says there are currently 1.25M dead each year from road accidents, if that reduces by 99% we'll have 12500 dead). Even if that costs $20B per year in liability, a company like Alphabet/Waymo can pay for it by the amount of money they are making in the actual self-driving tech.

<comment><USER50> _" There will plenty of money to pay for the 12500 people that die because of those systems."_

How much is a life worth?

<comment><USER51> > _How much is a life worth?_

Value is relative. Nothing has intrinsic financial worth. "What is a life worth to the average person in a society" is a well-researched and answered question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> UBER is not criminally liable, but THE DRIVER might be, since she was watching a TV show. Subtle but important detail. Looking at the comments, I suspect many comment without reading the article.

</comment><comment><USER53> Funny enough, this is about the fifth attempt to post this story to HN, with different links. It's getting barely any response.

<comment><USER54> Those previous attempts were successful. Perhaps you mean, "attempts to get upvoted to the front page"?

<comment><USER33> Yea, he's saying it's suspicious that this didn't get more upvotes. I agree.

<comment><USER54> What's the angle exactly? A shadow force of HN mods, colluding with Uber, to prevent this story from getting upvotes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> None of the top comments make any sense to me. I simply don't understand them. Anyway, here is my understanding of the subject:

(1) Yes, Uber should have trained the driver better to look at the road. By trained, I mean there should have been a sticky note on the wheel saying "PAY ATTENTION OR YOU WILL KILL SOMEONE"

(2) Yes, The driver absolutely should have to pay some penalty for this, if Uber told him that he should have been paying attention (Which they most certainly did). Watching a video while in a self-driving car is IDENTICAL to watching a video in a normal car. Modern self-driving cars are NOT fully autonomous, and they SHOULD be viewed as IDENTICAL to cruise control for all legal considerations, and thought experiments. Most of the top comments, which are blindly attacking self-driving cars, are not making this analysis.

However, (1) and (2) do not justify the lack of logic displayed by most of the top comments here. There seems to be violations of

(a) There is no logical difference between a person accidentally killing someone, and the self-driving car accidentally killing someone. Actually, because the car is already known to not be fully autonomous, this already is a case of the person accidentally killing someone. However, even if the car is fully autonomous, we MUST be considering the ODDS of an accident. None of the other comments are doing this. There is always an odds of an accident, so a specific accident means absolute bullshit. Literally nothing. This post doesn't even mean anything. What SHOULD be posted is "Self-driving cars with humans at the wheel kill X people per road-hour. Human-only cars kill Y people per road-hour". If X > Y, then yes we have a fking problem. But without that information, we literally have nothing to even think about, or process.

(b) Disabling the safety feature of the car is not a fk'ing concern, at all. Almost no cars have these features - only expensive ones do. Turning an expensive car into a normal car is NOT something you can be sued for, or is even something anyone should care about. Who is at blame for the situation is simply not dependent on this fact. I don't understand why people are discussing this aspect.

(c) Do you see the image? Maybe it's not showing it all. But as far as I can see there isn't a light there. Wtf is she doing crossing the road if there's no light there, without waiting for the cars? As a citydweller that is constantly found in the middle of streets trying to cross parts of the road that don't have stop lights, I just can't fathom ever being in her position. Maybe my city has less considerate drivers than her city, but if I tried to cross roads without a red light blocking cars, and didn't consciously give right of way to the traffic, I would die sometime this week.

(d) Many people seem to quote "self-driving system classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, then as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle" as "Oh this self-driving system is complete sh*t it's all Uber's fault". Makes no damn sense. As a side note, if you've ever worked with a neural net, especially with video as opposed to still photos, you already understand that the given sentence means nothing. That's just how they work, and there will always be milliseconds in-between frames where it reassigns the object's identification. But, anyway, this is not relevant. The self-driving part could have been completely off, or disabled. The car is SUPPOSED to be driven by the driver, and any deviation from that is the fault of either the driver, or Uber's training of the driver. Whether it's the former, or the latter, is exactly where and how suing should be directed and handled. Nothing else matters, despite most comments putting much emphasis on many other aspects of the situation.

<comment><USER56> Many dashcams do poorly in low light conditions, Uber's footage is not representative of what that section of road actually looks like. Compare it to this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOVxSCG8u0)

Additionally, it DOES. NOT MATTER. Whether the section of road was well lit or not. Does not matter. Because the pedestrian was already well into the road when the Uber vehicle hit her. Cars, as many people familiar with them may be aware, have headlights, which are suggested to be used while driving at night. If you can't stop fast enough to avoid hitting something at the farthest limits of your headlights, then you are driving too fast for conditions, whether a human or computer is driving. As I said, this isn't the case because the dashcam footage is deceiving, but even if it were accurate, it is immaterial for this particular case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I know its bad having a machine-controlled car killing someone, but.. it will happen and we must accept it and my guess is that it will happen far less than with human operators in the long-term.

<comment><USER33> The problem is that deaths per mile driven are currently much higher for self driving cars than humans. We don't have to just accept it. Progress can be made while still being safe -- at least, safer than how the free market would act.

> The NHTSA reports a fatality rate of 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles[2], > twenty five times the [4 million miles] Uber has driven.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620736)

<comment><USER40> One of the issues is that the car's stock system was disabled;

<comment><USER58> Absolutely not an issue. The last thing you want when developing a prototype piece of software for a 1 ton chunk of metal is another bit of software plugged in that you dont control or understand.

<comment><USER59> That's nonsense. The car had a human backup driver and human pedestrians, all not under the autonomous cars control.

An automatic emergency brake doesn't prevent a computer or human driver from braking when it wants to. If the autonomous system can't even avoid interaction with emergency brake, the prototype belongs in a lab, not on a public road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm not a lawyer, so forgive my ignorance, but how can a corporation be criminally liable for anything ever? It's not like you can charge a corporation with a crime or put a corporation in prison. Corporations can't commit crimes because they cannot act; only humans can.

<comment><USER61> The Ltd or LLC after many company names refer to the Limited Liability that those forms of companies confer, that protect individuals within them from personal liability. Corporations were intentionally a lot like people even before Citizens United. There's also a concept called Piercing the Corporate Veil that is intended specifically for penetrating through these legal protections in certain cases.

<comment><USER60> That limited liability is a civil one. How would you even charge a corporation with a criminal act, eg murder? Corporations cannot act, regardless of their personhood. Piercing the corporate veil, again, is a civil issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Self-driving vehicle development has so many difficult problems to solve. The technology itself is extremely difficult to create and relies on this extremely complex compromise where vehicles are allowed (and are) operated by code but ultimately babysat by drivers.

I think self-driving technology is worth the risk and worth the large amount of property damage and human injury that comes with it. However, this is a societal issue and there needs to be some sort of referendum on this. While many parallels can be drawn with space travel, those projects were tightly contained and included individuals who were specifically trained and informed of the potential dangers--there is no way to really do this at scale for self- driving tech which necessarily demands an expansive ecosystem that can't be tightly controlled nor can consent be inferred from the unknown number of people involved in this experiment.

<comment><USER63> _I think self-driving technology is worth the risk and worth the large amount of property damage and human injury that comes with it._

I'm guessing you don't see your property or life as being worth sacrificing for this "noble" goal, right? I'm a little horrified at people who gleefully volunteer their fellow humans to suffer or die in the name of progress. If however you want to personally volunteer your person and property in the name of technological advancement, that would be a different matter.

<comment><USER64> "Are you willing to risk your life to improve this" is a leading question. What I think you meant to ask is something more like "are you willing to improve safety with your daily risk or not". I am already risking my life on the road every day. Last month I was in a Lyft and the driver decided to go around a car that was blocking an intersection and in the process swung the front of the car though the path of an oncoming light-rail train. I've known a couple people that got hit by drunk drivers; they didn't sign up for anything at all. So what's the difference? There are multiple fatal automobile accidents per day _per major metro area_. At least make those deaths mean something.

In fact, we already do this. All over the place. Clinical trials. Yeah, those are more heavily regulated, but the possibility of relatively increased risk there is far greater - I would not expect a modern autonomous vehicle to be ten or a hundred times more likely to kill its passengers than a human driver is. How about legislation? The legislation on drugs that's ruining some states is nothing more than some politician spending their constituents' lives to signal their own perceived moral virtue to their party. Or maybe construction projects. Every time we put up a lighter, cheaper bridge we are saving time and money by risking the lives of every person that takes that bridge instead of finding a job on the near side of the river. Or allergic reactions to medications, including vaccines! Negative reactions to vaccines are incredibly rare, but you bet your ass that I will choose to bet that someone doesn't have guillain-barre instead of letting them spread measles.

Alternatively, excuse me while I fight dirty for a bit. Let's turn your argument around. I believe that it is effectively certain that autonomous vehicles will save lives in the long run. Slowing that down costs lives. So why are you so willing to spend those lives? What right do you have to spend the lives of the people who would have been saved by autonomous cars because you thought that it was more important to preserve people's right to get hit by drunk drivers today?

This is what civilization _is_. Just do the math.

<comment><USER63> _" Are you willing to risk your life to improve this" is a leading question. What I think you meant to ask is something more like "are you willing to improve safety with your daily risk or not". I am already risking my life on the road every day. Last month I was in a Lyft and the driver decided to go around a car that was blocking an intersection and in the process swung the front of the car though the path of an oncoming light-rail train. So what's the difference? There are multiple fatal automobile accidents per day per major metro area. At least make that mean something._

Actually I meant what I said, because I responded to someone explicitly endorsing not only Risk, but _and worth the large amount of property damage and human injury that comes with it._ as for Lyft, you _choose_ to get into thst car, I can choose to get into a car or not as well. The lady who was run down by Uber didn't make any such choice. In general, choice and informed consent are the big different and big deal when we're talking about unproven technology being developed on our streets; not because no other option exists, but because it's quicker and cheaper.

 _In fact, we already do this. All over the place. Clinical trials._

People _volunteer_ for them, and are fully informed of the risks and benefits, they don't volunteer random other people. This is the very key difference I was pointing out. As I said, if you want to be a guinea pig in the name of progress, that's your right and I'll support and laud you for it. Just don't volunteer me.

<comment><USER64> _as for Lyft, you choose to get into thst car, I can choose to get into a car or not as well_

How far do you want to take this? I accepted the risk of idiot drivers not checking before turning right when I chose to walk to work. I accepted the risk of drunk drivers drifting over the double yellow when I decided to drive to work. That train driver accepted the risk of up-close traumatic experiences when they took the job. Children accept the risk of being driven to school by their parents or walking across the street in the morning to catch the school bus.

I have to get from my apartment to my office every morning. I have to get from my office to my apartment every evening. So what am I supposed to do? I can't walk that far. Biking is just as dangerous as taking a taxi. I have bad knees and public transit only works for me a couple times a week. If I get behind the wheel I'm on the same road as drunk drivers and idiot drivers, and for medical reasons I don't have that option anyway. If I take a lyft or a taxi I'm being driven by some rando off the street. So, what, if I get run over by a fucking drunk driver one night, it's totally my fault, and I accepted that risk by _fucking existing_? _I don 't have a choice_. I did not _accept_ this risk. This risk was _forced on me_.

I don't care which risk I'm taking. I don't care which one is being forced on my. I don't care who is forcing it on me. I care about how _much_ risk I am accepting. And so:

 _deal when we're talking about unproven technology being developed on our streets_

This is the only part of your argument that matters. The rest is an emotional distraction. _If_ you can demonstrate that autonomous vehicles are a _greater_ risk than the alternative, _then_ you get to say that they're dangerous. And I don't think that you can say that. Why do you think that you get to volunteer a decade of people to being run over by drunk drivers and idiots? Because that is what you are doing - autonomous vehicles may be an unproven risk, but humans are such a long-standing and thoroughly proven risk that people have just become _inured_ to it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot - <AUTHOR> Feather (https://rentfeather.com) is a furniture rental company, setting out to provide stylish, affordable furniture to people and startups that move frequently.
I've moved 5 times in 6 years living in New York, and each time I spent an overwhelming amount of time at IKEA buying, schlepping, and assembling furniture I didn't exactly want. And at the end of each lease, I found myself with furniture that didn't travel well to my new apartment, and often had to scrap it, only to return to IKEA again to furnish my new apartment.
It was a cycle of buying things I didn't really want, that didn't really last - and I'm sure many of you have gone through the same trouble.
That gave me the idea for Feather. Click a few buttons and your furniture is delivered, fully assembled, and placed in the room of your choice. And importantly, when you're ready to move, tap a button and we'll come and pick it up.
We're excited to help people live more free and flexible lifestyles - and would love the feedback of the HN community!
Thanks all,
Jay, Founder & CEO <comment><USER3> The problem with this business is that the company ends up with warehouses of used furniture. Then what? Check it over, clean it, repair it, and send it out again? Customers are going to complain if you send them beat-up junk. You're going to need a cleaning and inspection operation, an upholstery shop, and an air conditioner shop. What to do with the rejects? Sell downmarket? Put on Craigslist? Goodwill?

If it takes you 2-4 days to deliver a bed, you're not competitive. A more useful service might be "we deliver a bed, a dresser, a table, and some chairs in 4 hours". Add in bed linens, towels, some basic dishes and tableware, and a starter kit of toilet paper, paper towels, laundry and dish detergent, and soap. Instant setup of light housekeeping, just what someone needs when they start a new job in a new place and have more urgent things to do than fuss with furniture shopping. You can sell them more stuff later.

You're in NYC and SF, non-car cities. Offer this primarily in places where people don't have cars but move often.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like to move as well. What I've found:

The problem with every rental place I've seen is how expensive they are. You could just buy the furniture outright for the cost of three months rental. Doesn't exactly match the year lease does it? :-/

There is a used market for IKEA furniture, and they're swapped regularly on Craigslist for half price assembled. Sometimes you can even rent for "free" by buying used and selling later. New items can be sold at half price as well. So I haven't had as much difficulty with that, though I wish they had more "modular" i.e. snap together furniture.

So there are some challenges to this endeavor, good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughts! Curious to hear what type of furniture you would be purchasing that would break even to our furniture at 3 months?

The breakeven price for our customers is always longer than the total price of the rental. Wonder if we should be explicitly stating this on our site?

<comment><USER5> What about this bed in Queen Size? (First piece I priced out)

[https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/dunham-...](https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/dunham- upholstered-bed?variant=37405401929)

[https://www.wayfair.com/Zipcode%E2%84%A2-Design-Colby- Uphols...](https://www.wayfair.com/Zipcode%E2%84%A2-Design-Colby-Upholstered- Platform-Bed-ZIPC6040.html)

Feather 3 month rental price: $207

Wayfair purchase price (including shipping): $201

<comment><AUTHOR> See my reply to koolba below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Inexpensive, mass-market furniture is going to be hard to build a business around in this regard. A lot of rightful squawking about prices compared to Overstock/Wayfair.

What if you're targeting too downmarket with this?

What if instead you marketed heirloom-quality furniture at the same price point, but gave the option at the end of "leases" to purchase or relinquish that furniture. You get margin on the lease, get paid out for the rest of the asset if they buy, but if they don't, you have great inventory that you can mark down.

That would give frequent movers access to something better than wayfair/overstock/ikea without having to commit to a $3500 armoire if it doesn't match the aesthetic or lifestyle that they have after moving or growing.

Good luck and all!

<comment><USER7> Good advice.

I want to add that for $18/mo you can get a knock-off of a Hans Wegner PP501 [1]. That's very expensive for what's guaranteed to be a dime-a-dozen Chinese- made replica of the type you find on Wayfair or Overstock [2]. I can't reasonably afford a Wegner (it's about $4,000-5,000 new, and vintage models are ironically even pricier), but I could see myself leasing one.

Leasing isn't just for people who move a lot. Leasing would also allow you to swap out the furniture every now and then.

[1] "Austin chair", [https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/austing...](https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/austing- chair)

[2] Possibly this: [https://www.wayfair.com/Stilnovo-The-Kennedy-Arm-Chair- STNO1...](https://www.wayfair.com/Stilnovo-The-Kennedy-Arm-Chair- STNO1381.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was really surprised by how difficult it was to find a fully furnished apartment. I really did not enjoy those trips to IKEA and putting everything together. In contrast, it seems that most apartments in Chiang Mai are fully furnished. We've moved 3 times so far, and it's always just one car ride with a small collection of personal stuff. It's really nice to never have to worry about furniture.

I don't think I would use this service if I was moving to NYC, I'd just look for a furnished apartment.

<comment><USER9> Similar experience moving to bay area from the UK, where furnished apartments are _far_ more common. I remember expressing surprise at a temporary budget for furniture rental in the moving expenses work covered. Given I didn't want to continue paying Cort a ton of money forever for tables and chairs I chose to buy all my own not particularly great furniture straight off the bat.

I always get horrible flashbacks to my own experiences seeing another "fresh off the boat" foreign engineer trying to outfit his entire life in one trip to the East Palo Alto Ikea, using up an entire roll of receipt paper to cover the hundreds of items they had to buy for their new unfurnished home.

<comment><USER4> Craigslist often has most of what you'll need every weekend, often in the same neighborhood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes me feel really out of touch. I can't imagine scrapping my furniture just because I'm moving. I've moved every year for the past 4 years. I just pay some movers and they get everything in and out just fine. Some services will even handle packing and unpacking everything for you.

If someone's going to be living somewhere for only 2 or 3 months, I can understand renting. But I don't think renting makes economic sense for most people. You can probably just buy the equivalent or very similar furniture and break even. If you don't wanna assemble it, pay someone on through TaskRabbit or equivalent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed - scrapping furniture just because you're moving is not a great idea. This will, however, occur often when we buy IKEA furniture (or items of that quality level) that we often have to trash items, or are actually trashed accidentally during a move (think one of their flimsy dressers or wardrobes).

It's a wasteful practice, and an important part of our mission is to keep furniture out of the landfills. That starts by getting as many uses out of the furniture that we can, before it stops working for us, either visually or functionally.

<comment><USER11> > This will, however, occur often when we buy IKEA furniture (or items of that > quality level) that we often have to trash items, or are actually trashed > accidentally during a move (think one of their flimsy dressers or > wardrobes).

My last move, moving a house almost completely furnished with IKEA furniture, most of which had been around for a decade, only one item (that was inconveniently sized to remove intact, not because of structural failure) didn't make the move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Delivery costs $99. Pickup cost varies with the size of your order - <USER2> > you're just renting a few items, we'll keep it between $99-$149, but if > you're outfitting a whole apartment on a 4th-floor walkup, pickup is likely > to be a bit more. There is a $99 refundable deposit - we charge you on the > first day of your lease, and as long as the furniture is in good shape when > we pick it up, it'll be returned after pickup! There will be a $49 charge > added for a weekend delivery.

That's approximately how much IKEA charges for delivering an order though they only charge based on distance. It doesn't matter if you have a single tea light candle or furnishing an entire 25-bedroom castle.

Delivery costs aside, I'm wondering who would pay the steep premiums for these items. Take this bed for example: [https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/remy- up...](https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/remy-upholstered- bed)

It's listed as $28/month assuming you commit to a 12-month term. That's $336 in total.

What appears to be the same bed is listed on Wayfair to buy for $338: [https://www.wayfair.com/Langley-Street%E2%84%A2-Rasmussen- Up...](https://www.wayfair.com/Langley-Street%E2%84%A2-Rasmussen-Upholstered- Platform-Bed-LGLY2717.html)

The annual cost is the same with the difference being at the end of the year you own the bed rather than being on the hook for an eventual "return fee".

So who would willingly enter such a deal? Is the market targeting people who don't have the credit to buy the items out right?

Or is the moving in/out aspect the real kicker? Sure it's a pain in the ass but that's a steep price to pay to avoid one phone call to a moving company (or even just a CraigsList " _Free bed ... just pick it up_ " posting).

 _EDIT:_ Here's an even better example. I'm pretty sure these are exactly the same bed as the pictures are identical:

Purchase Queen for $200 w/ free shipping: [https://www.wayfair.com/Zipcode%E2%84%A2-Design-Colby- Uphols...](https://www.wayfair.com/Zipcode%E2%84%A2-Design-Colby-Upholstered- Platform-Bed-ZIPC6040.html)

Rent from Queen for $28/month = $336 + $99 shipping: [https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/dunham-...](https://rentfeather.com/collections/bedroom/products/dunham- upholstered-bed?variant=37405401929)

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to jump in here to talk about pricing, as it seems to be a big topic of conversation (and rightfully so).

\- The $338 bed that you linked to is on a massive, one-time sale right now. I've refreshed the page several times and the price keeps changing. The manufacturer must be testing a bunch of things out - take a look. Let's leave that one example there for now.

\- The Purchase Queen you linked to does look nearly identical to what we get from our manufacturer that must also sell to Wayfair. And the price on this item has shifted dramatically on Wayfair as well.

Seems you grabbed a particular item that doesn't favor us well in the rent vs buy equation. For the majority of our items: try the same comparison and let me know what you find.

Point here is, we should be more aware of the dynamically shifting prices of items on other sellers websites and re-price our items accordingly. Good catch, thanks.

<comment><USER13> The specific price comparisons aside, it would make sense to offer ownership after X months. So you can position yourself as a rental + financing service. If you pay rent for, say 14 months, you own the stuff.

<comment><USER14> That combined with skipping the return fee would set up some interesting dynamics (if you're at month 10, are you going to ride out the rental to own it or do you pay to get it out). Can't decide if that feels user hostile or not though :-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://rentfeather.com](https://rentfeather.com)

This might be a helpful service for real estate agents who need to stage a home for a photographer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, totally. We've been approached by a number of real estate agents asking if we'll do staging. We're working on seeing of and how this might fit into our business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A lot of students end up moving places due to 1) lease change 2) internships. Might be useful to them.

However, the pricing is insanely expensive. 3 month rental for a dresser is $210; same for a AC unit. You can buy new ones for the same price.

<comment><USER11> > A lot of students end up moving places due to 1) lease change 2) > internships. Might be useful to them.

True, then again, established furniture rental firms [0] target them; what's Feather's distinct advantage here?

[0] e.g., [https://www.cort.com/student](https://www.cort.com/student)

<comment><AUTHOR> We plan to differentiate ourselves by offering better quality items, a more modern storefront/interface, a superior customer experience with top notch support, and most importantly, better pricing (we know it's not perfect for every item yet, but our prices are getting better as we grow).

<comment><USER11> Better pricing than CORTs student packages of $119/mo for three room package for 12+ months?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I agree on what people are saying regarding the pricing; however, be sure to compare apples to apples. Part of the value-add in this is it comes complete delivered and ready to use, and hauled away at the end.

If you've ever had to borrow vehicles/friends or go up flights of stairs, spend an evening assembling, or wade through buyers in classified ads to get rid of it, you know that has value as well.

<comment><USER11> > Part of the value-add in this is it comes complete delivered and ready to > use, and hauled away at the end.

Aren't delivery and pickup charged services on top of the rental fee? So, it's not a value-add, just an available service (as is the case with incumbent rental providers, and also with most furniture sellers, except haul-away, which is only occasionally offered and even then only in a form useful if you _aren 't_ moving, since the haul away and delivery need to be at the same place.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just glancing at the home page, I see two sofas for over $100 /mo. At that price, even if you're someplace for only a year, it makes more sense to buy. Especially if you don't mind the effort of reselling, which could be minimal -- even at firesale prices you'd still come out way ahead vs rental fees that high.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ~$100/month price is our 3 month price. So total cost to you to have either of those sofas is $300 vs the cost to buy them retail at $600, which excludes assembly.

Fire sales are easier said than done. Takes time to get real replies via craigslist, and often times you might forget to sell the item till days before you're moving, adding to the headache.

<comment><USER19> Granted in a 3 month scenario, the total out of pocket cost is $300 but it's a bit disingenuous to directly compare that to the $600 cost of the couch.

No matter how you look at it, the renting option will be more expensive. Just own it and don't try to defend it or make it sound less than it is using shaky comparisons. Doing so just makes you sound shadier than necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What differentiates you from the dozens of other furniture rental services out there? This isn't exactly a new industry. From what I see online, your prices are pretty comparable to Cort's. But as a consumer I'm pretty sure Cort will still be around in 6 months, whereas I'm not so sure about you guys (no offense, I just mean because you're a startup, not because I think you are necessarily worse).

Is there a reason you decided to enter this more conventional, established market?

<comment><USER21> Well, so what if they aren't around in 6 months? Once the furniture is delivered, there's not much risk to the customer after that.

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't want their assets to be acquired by some organization that specializes in liquidating end-of-life business, and then have to deal with them instead.

<comment><USER21> Normally a new owner has to honor contracts/leases made with the former owner. Maybe the rules are different in a liquidation situation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >What other expenses are there?

>...but if you're outfitting a whole apartment on a 4th-floor walkup, pickup is likely to be a bit more.

Uh, how much more?

>What if I damage my furniture during my lease?

>In general, a little wear and tear shouldn't be a problem...As long as your furniture is in respectable shape when we come to pick it up, there's nothing to worry about.

Never answers the question...what if it's _damage_ beyond wear and tear? I'm charged the full price of the item? Minus rental fees I've already paid on it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not much more. If the apartment is way up a walkup and we're carrying 4 dressers, 4 tables, 4 armoires, etc, we'll generally change the $99 delivery fee to $149.

Re damage: if you break something, we charge the cost of fixing the item. Since it's different for each item (ie. a small cut in the sofa vs reupholstering an entire sofa that had a bottle of wine spilled on it), it's difficult for us to explicitly state how much it would cost us for each type of damage. But we could certainly try.

<comment><USER4> Sounds reasonable, add it to the FAQ. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get what's new here. What is feather offering that established furniture rental firms like Brook, CORT, Aaron's, etc., don't provide?

</comment><comment><USER23> I love it, bookmarked. I'm planning on moving soon and this hits all my pain points. I would much rather pay a monthly bill rather than a fee up front.

</comment><comment><USER24> What do you think about the fact that, in general, the percentage of Americans who move is on the decline?

> In the mid-1960s, about 20 percent of the population moved in any given > year, according to the United States Census Bureau. By 1990, it was > approaching 15 percent. Today it's closer to 10 percent. The percentage that > moves between states has fallen by nearly half since the early 1990s.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/opinion/how-to-get- americ...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/opinion/how-to-get-americans- moving-again.html)

Also, [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/02/american-mobility- has...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/02/american-mobility-has- declined/514310/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point here. It's a bit counter intuitive, right, that Americans on the whole are moving less. To add some color:

-The majority of Americans that live in rural or somewhat suburban areas are most certainly (though anecdotally) bringing this number down. In cities, you'd expect this number to be much higher than 10%.

-This data point from article below is bit more telling of our target market. Please don't mind their incessant use of the term "millennials" \- they know not what they do.

> "44% of millennials say they plan to move again in the next year." > ([http://blog.rent.com/the-millennial-generation-on-the- > move/](http://blog.rent.com/the-millennial-generation-on-the-move/))

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the response! Some follow-up questions

1\. Does your market analysis differentiate between intra-city and inter-city move? It feels like the service is much more valuable for people moving inter- city.

2\. Is there a better source for the "planned future mobility" data? I would expect rent.com to have a strong editorial bias around the perception that the rental market is healthy and renters are competing with each other. I would not expect the same kind of bias in census data.

3\. I would love to see the census data's mobility over time cohorted by age group. Is that something you guys have done, and can share?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Data is about split. We're seeing people use us for both inter- and intra- city moves.

2\. Agreed, might be a bit biased. LMK if you find a different/better source.

3\. Census, unfortunately no. But like above, equally curious to see if that data is easily accessible, and if so, would love to dive in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> First reaction: premade but customized "kits" would be nice

Second reaction: renting feels wasteful as the consumer and I struggle to see how it's profitable to refurbish/re-rent used furniture.

What would be really enticing: premade, customizable kits with 6-12 month financing and "trade-ups." Where I could sell back a piece for a newer/nicer piece. This might happen during the context of a move.

Providing a moving service too then seems a little tangential to the core business model, however it may still be advantageous since it could fill up slack time between deliveries. You would also have a perfect inventory of furniture and could provide an instant estimate and a one click purchase.

</comment><comment><USER26> Very much love this idea.

I think a great example of where this could be useful (sorry if someone already said this) is that it makes it incredibly easy to do the initial moving.

A lot of times after moving you just don't have the stamina to go out and buy, have shipped, and then assemble furniture. Especially for 1 bedroom and 2 bedroom places, it would be nice to have the furniture ready to go, while you steadily buy your own stuff within 6 months.

This does assumes you will throw half or more of your furniture when you move, but considering the success of Ikea and also the fragility of their furniture, this seems like something many would do.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is genius time! I've moved a half dozen times in and since college. No way I can impose on friends and family to help me move anymore. When are you coming to L.A.? I'm all in when you do.

</comment><comment><USER28> Do you guys do rent to buy? Can I just keep something If I like it enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, rent-to-buy is something we recently starting working on. Many people have asked about this, and we agree it makes a LOT of sense for our customers to have that option at any point during their rental. We'll have more info on our site in the coming weeks, but until then, we'll gladly discuss details directly with you if you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Wait a minute, you want me to rent furniture?

> We get it. This is kind of new, right? We're excited about that.

But it's... not remotely new, right?

[EDIT] seriously, "tiny houses" = mobile homes for well-off millennials, Feather = Rent-a-Center for well-off millennials, Soylent = Ensure for well- off millennials. I guess I should start a payday loans company marketed in such a way that using it doesn't offend the class sensibilities and self-image of well-off millennials and say I'm doing something "new".

<comment><USER30> I have this great idea for printing out the top news stories for reading offline. You could print them off early morning and have them waiting for people at train stations, coffee shops, hotels, etc. If it really takes off, people might even be willing to pay for them to be delivered each week or even each morning. And of course you could sell advertising to subsidize the cost!

We're totally going to disrupt the online news business!

Edit: I should mention I love the idea of renting and returning furniture. I very much identify with the pain points mentioned and would prefer to rent high-quality furniture instead of buying and disposing of particle board crap every year or two.

<comment><USER31> I have this great idea for this new service called real time voice messaging, instead of typing out your message you simply say it into a microphone and it is delivered to the other person in real time audio. It also works in real time in the other direction.

Actually, the idea of online furniture rental is not bad really, we are just having fun with it. I recently sold my house and I rented furniture for staging, that could be another aspect of their business model, those staging people charge a ton, I get it some of it is for the "design" but really there could be a few canned designed on a web page and done far cheaper I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > I've moved 5 times in 6 years

I've moved 10 times in the past 6 years so I can definitely relate to the problem. I ended up buying a lot of furniture over the years and donating it to a Goodwill store every time I moved. I moved most recently 4 months ago and would have used this service. I'll try to remember you in about 10 months (when my current lease is up).

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, glad to see this resonate. Where are you generally moving to/from? Inter- or intra-city moves?

<comment><USER32> I've moved from SF Bay to LA, moved back to SF, moved back to LA (probably going to move back to SF again). Within SF Bay and LA moved a couple times as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Everything which makes life easier to people who move a lot has potential because people will move more and more. Good idea

</comment><comment><USER34> YES! I'm a student at Columbia and I hate having to spend money on cheap furniture and having to sell it for a very low price at the end of the school year when moving out. This is EXACTLY what I'm looking for, and I'm sure that a ton of other students are looking for the same too. Best of luck with YC :)

</comment><comment><USER35> The economics here doesn't make sense.

The cheaper couches hover around $40/month, which over a 12 month period at 7% YOY interest is valued at 473 PV or 508 FV.

What's the motivation against just buying new or used and selling once you're done? A marketplace for this sort of thing would make more sense than a service.

<comment><USER21> Convenience. If I move frequently, I don't have the time or desire to deal with listing stuff for sale, deal with people coming to look at it, deal with getting paid for it, deal with people trying to scam me, etc. Just open my browser, a couple of clicks and I'm done with it. If it costs me a couple of hundred dollars more over the year, I don't care. It's probably just background noise compared to my income and the convenience is worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sounds like a good experiment, but your biggest competition is stores that offer financing. Why wouldn't I finance and then sell or move away with my furniture? What if the furniture is scratched, broken etc...Do I have to pay the full price now?

<comment><AUTHOR> We see ourselves as competing more with "ownership" than anything else. To us, ownership of furniture (i.e. responsibility for big ticket items that tie you down) is the problem.

Our competitive advantage to financing options is just that: we remove ownership from the equation while still giving you the ability to pay monthly rather than a large lump sum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe to address the pricing concerns you could make it more like car leasing deals that often allow to buy the leased car after the contract is over? You could rent furniture but with an option to buy at any time and terminate the monthly payments.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what we're working on now. we should have more information about rent-to-buy options on our site soon, but in the meantime we're discussing it directly with anyone who might be interested in this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I just use the Ikea return policy and position myself around Ikeas.

Really missing out in the Philippines. Furniture here overall sucks.

"Return policy

NO-NONSENSE - 365 DAYS TO CHANGE YOUR MIND

 _mattresses purchases may be exchanged for another mattress one time within 365 days if you don't love it._ products that are returned or exchanged must be clean and undamaged. Refunds will be made in the same form of payment originally used to make the purchase. It's OK to change your mind. If you're not totally satisfied with your IKEA purchase you can return it within 365 days, together with proof of purchase, for a full refund*."

[http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/customer-service/about- shopping...](http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/customer-service/about- shopping/return-policy/index.html)

Japan is similar.

Singapore is 90 days AFAIK.

Not sure about Thailand, gunna find out.

<comment><USER39> This is pretty similar to saying, "I don't rent cars, I just steal them." You're buying things, keeping them for <1 year, then returning them for the full value?

Even if this is allowed/legal, it isn't exactly moral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've moved three times in the last 12 months, and will move again in three months. Unfortunately, Feather is unlikely to be available in my country (Spain) in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER41> Fyi you can return items to IKEA for up to 1 year after purchase. Even built.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hi there,

It sounds interesting.

How does the logistics of this business work? Do you have the forniture? Who does the delivery?

Thank you

Schilick

Thank you

</comment><comment><USER43> The only thing I'm scared of is Bed Bugs.

<comment><USER21> Matresses are probably destroyed or recycled. A lot of states have regulations specifically addressing sale of used matresses.

Other furniture can harbor bedbugs of course, as well as other pests such as cockroaches. It's a risk. I'm not sure how it's dealt with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> where is the website?

<comment><USER44> Added now. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > I guess I should start a payday loans company marketed in such a way that > using it doesn't offend the class sensibilities and self-image of well-off > millennials and say I'm doing something "new".

[https://www.lendup.com/](https://www.lendup.com/)

<comment><USER46> Didn't know about this. Landing page says

> Good Credit Not Required.

> Instant decision.

Wow.

<comment><USER47> What's wrong with granting loans to people who have bad credit? What are they supposed to do if there's a shortfall or a car breaks down, pawn a wedding ring?

I used to work for LendUp. They're the most caring and altruistic people I've ever met. I mean that literally.

LendUp uses machine learning & data science to decision people with more granularity than a credit score, and can therefore approve much deeper than banks or credit card companies ever would. On top of that, as LendUp learns you're a reliable borrower, it will lower your interest rate as far as it can _for you_ , give you more favorable terms, and even extend a credit card for those that qualify.

LendUp helps people improve their credit when almost no one else will lend to them, and has been shown _in independent studies_ to both improve credit scores and decrease the costs of borrowing for subprime borrowers. These are folks for whom the only other option is payday loans or pawn shops if there's a shortfall, and LendUp uses tech to give them much better options.

It's a noble mission, and one I'm damn proud to have been a part of.

<comment><USER48> What's wrong is the absurd fees they charge. The only difference I can see between them and payday lenders is the shabby facade of credibility they think they have by being a "tech" company. Nobody who has to scrabble for $250 for an emergency is in a position to drop a 25% vig on top of it in repayment.

<comment><USER49> But if you lend to high-risk creditors, you have to have non-repayment built into the rate. As of the last time I saw an article on it, the rate of default for payday loans was something like 50%. High interest rates are there to absorb the risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Website please?

EDIT: [https://rentfeather.com/](https://rentfeather.com/)</comment>


Rust by Example - <AUTHOR> http://rustbyexample.com/ <comment><USER2> If you want something like this but a little bit shorter that easily fits on 3 printed pages: [https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/rust/](https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/rust/)

<comment><USER3> And [https://play.rust-lang.org/](https://play.rust-lang.org/) can be used to test snippets of Rust code w/o having to install compiler. The best feature is you can make a link to your code for others to review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this to be okay as a relatively speedy intro. It's quite disorganised though - some concepts and terms appear to be assumed but then introduced properly later on. I was wondering if this was intentional or not (maybe you are supposed to be patient?).

<comment><USER5> I assume the site is mostly aimed at people who have already read the rust book [1].

[1] [https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/)

<comment><USER6> Rust by Example was actually not originally a Rust team project. It was an independent work that was handed over to the Rust team for maintenance by the original author.

As I understand, it received basic polishing and updates to make sure it was correct, but hasn't been edited much beyond that.

<comment><USER7> This history is accurate. RBE is pretty low on my priority list; finishing up the book and the standard library docs are much more important right now. I to try to keep up on PRs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's with the exclamation mark at the end of function names? e.g. println!("foo")

<comment><USER9> That signifies a macro. It's meant to visually distinguish macros from ordinary function calls because macros may have arbitrary semantics (they can expand into any code at all). The stdlib defines `println` as a macro because it allows for a neat compile-time parsing of format strings.

(See [1] and the linked source if curious.)

[1] [https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/macro.println!.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/macro.println!.html)

<comment><USER10> Sounds like what Rust needs is _compile macros_ [1]. That way, printf can still be a function, but it would be optimized at compile time if the formatting string is constant.

[1] [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node101.html](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node101.html)

<comment><USER11> Compile macros wouldn't be sufficient for Rust's println! because the type signature (even the number of arguments) depends on the format string. The format string has to be constant and has to be interpreted at compile time so that the variables being printed can be type-checked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> no table of contents? see the gobyexample.com site for how to do it better

<comment><USER13> Are you on mobile? I get a hamburger menu at the top that pulls out a ToC from the left side.

<comment><USER14> Nothing appears on iOS with content blockers on, but the menu is still clickable. Another brilliant example of modern web-design.

<comment><USER15> Did you scroll a little bit? It's not visible unless you scroll up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's the shelf life of a techie? Just 15 years - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Whats-the-shelf-life-of-a-techie-Just-15-years/articleshow/17250356.cms <comment><USER2> Misleading, the lifetime of an SDK is shorter and thus the lifetime of stubborn engineers is shorter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even the title shows how ridiculous this "article" is. Shelf life of a techie? Are they even people?</comment>


Ask HN/PG: YC RFS still valid? - <AUTHOR>

I just read through the RFS (http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html), which was written in 2009. I'm not sure if YC is still looking for those types of products. More specifically, there's an item that says "Things built on Twitter".<p>Recently every investor I talked to didn't like products that are built on top of Twitter, and I wonder if YC's perspective has also changed. <comment><USER2> I'm one of the founders of Crowdbooster, a YC S10 company built on Twitter.

Twitter, and specifically the API team, has worked hard to come up with guidance for where they think there are opportunities in the ecosystem.

They have very clearly told third-party developers to stop making Twitter clients [1]. Twitter wants to own the display of tweets since they are focused on making advertising their core business.

But there are definitely opportunities if you think beyond just making clients. The five main categories that Twitter specifically mentions are: Analytics, Curation, Content, Publishing, and Enterprise [2].

To echo PG, there are definitely still big companies to be built on top of Twitter. You just have to think big to begin with.

[1] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/twitter- development-...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/twitter-development- talk/yCzVnHqHIWo)

[2] <https://dev.twitter.com/blog/ecosystem-showcase>

</comment><comment><USER3> We're probably not _as_ hot on it, but I still think there are big new things to be built that will rely on Twitter.

<comment><USER4> Hi PG, we submitted the application and included an idea for a business/enterprise application built on Twitter. While it is not the main idea with which we're applying to YC, it is something I've thought about for a long time.

This Twitter app is really something I wish I have. I have also seen other companies using Twitter in the context described in my application. I had even posted this idea on Facebook so that someone else could build it, but until now, it doesn't exist yet.

Please check out our application and let me know what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It has been updated since the iPad was not released till 2010 and there is an RFS: <http://ycombinator.com/rfs6.html>

<comment><USER6> For what it's worth, they still ask on the YC app if you are applying in response to an RFS.

Hard to tell, but that's probably a good indicator that they still are interested in them.</comment></comment>


Classmates.com settles class action suit alleging spam and privacy violations - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmemailsettlement.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've often griped about Classmates.com's incessant emails and the total inability to unsubscribe from them. I eventually created a gmail filter to trash them. I guess I wasn't the only one, as they've recently agreed to settle a class action lawsuit over their email practices.

I never remember to file for these things and I often pass because I didn't feel wronged by the alleged infraction, but in this case I will gladly take my ten bucks.</comment>