March 21, 2018

Let’s Please Calm Down For a Few Days Over the Uber Car Crash

Laura Dale/PA Wire via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Driverless cars are equipped with video, lidar, radar, sonar, and probably every other “ar” that exists. I assume this means that we will soon have massive amounts of evidence about what happened with the Uber car that killed a pedestrian in Arizona. Because of this, I’m willing to wait a few days before getting too hysterical about the whole thing, and I’d recommend everyone else do the same thing. But that means Uber better release some of this stuff pretty quickly. They’re going to have to do it in court anyway, so why not now?

And while we’re on the subject, an awful lot of people seem to think that we’re now in terra incognita over the question of who’s at fault. What if it’s just an algorithm on a chip? Sue the chip? ZOMG!

So I would like to personally assure everyone that this kind of thing has been adjudicated ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. A driverless car is just a machine. It is owned by someone and insured by someone. If subcontractors are responsible for software development, they have contracts in place that apportion responsibility. If the contracts aren’t clear, a court will decide who’s at fault. Ditto for the safety driver. There is nothing new or unusual about any of this, so can everyone please stand down on the allegedly unprecedented legal mess we’re all about to embark on?

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate