In case you didn’t know about this story:
Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday sent a letter to the CEO of Uber saying he was suspending the ride-sharing company's tests of self-driving cars on Arizona roads after a fatal accident March 18 in Tempe.
That night, a self-driving Volvo operated by Uber struck and killed a pedestrian who was jaywalking on Mill Avenue near Arizona State University.
Uber pulled its self-driving cars off the roads, but after video was released of the accident last week, Ducey said he needed to act to protect the safety of Arizonans.
"Improving public safety has always been the emphasis of Arizona's approach to autonomous vehicle testing, and my expectation is that public safety is also the top priority for all who operate this technology in the state of Arizona," Ducey said in his letter to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
"The incident that took place on March 18 is an unquestionable failure to comply with this expectation."
Well there’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye:
Arizona’s Republican governor repeatedly encouraged Uber’s controversial experiment with autonomous cars in the state, enabling a secret testing program for self-driving vehicles with limited oversight from experts, according to hundreds of emails obtained by the Guardian.
The previously unseen emails between Uber and the office of governor Doug Ducey reveal how Uber began quietly testing self-driving cars in Phoenix in August 2016 without informing the public.
On Monday, 10 days after one of Uber’s self-driving vehicles killed a pedestrian in a Phoenix suburb, Ducey suspended the company’s right to operate autonomous cars on public roads in Arizona. It was a major about-face for the governor, who has spent years embracing the Silicon Valley startup.
Uber’s behind-the-scenes efforts to court Ducey, and the governor’s apparent willingness to satisfy the company, is made clear in the emails, which were sent between 2015 and 2007 and obtained by the Guardian through public records requests.
They reveal how Uber offered workspace for Ducey’s staff in San Francisco, praised the governor lavishly, and promised to bring money and jobs to his state. Ducey, meanwhile, helped Uber deal with other officials in Arizona, issued decrees that were friendly to the company, tweeted out an advert at the company’s request, and even seems to have been open to wearing an Uber T-shirt at an official event.
There is no way to know whether tougher regulations would have prevented the death of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was struck by an Uber-owned Volvo while it was in self-driving mode on 19 March. Uber immediately suspended its self-driving vehicle testing in Arizona, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.
The first fatal crash involving a self-driving vehicle and a pedestrian in the US has sparked a national discussion about the safety of a technology, which tech companies claim will dramatically improve road safety.
However the correspondence between Ducey and Uber will now throw a spotlight on the Arizona governor’s office – and raise questions about his apparently laissez-faire approach to safety. While Arizona’s neighbour California has some of the toughest self-driving regulations in America, other states, such as Michigan and Florida, are at least as permissive as Arizona, with few restrictions and little oversight of highly automated vehicles.
Remember when Republicans obsessed and slammed Hillary Clinton over her e-mails? Well this is a real case here and I hope Arizona State University professor and gubernatorial candidate, David Garcia (D. AZ), will slam Ducey over this e-mail scandal. Garcia has mainly been focused on education funding and teachers’ pay which has also become a headache for Ducey:
On the eve of a teacher rally to demand more money for Arizona’s public schools, the state just came down with a $344 million headache.
A federal judge on Monday ruled that Proposition 123 violated federal law.
You remember Prop. 123 – Gov. Doug Ducey’s shrewd plan to give schools 70 percent of what they were owed to settle a school funding lawsuit. This, by dipping into the principal of the state land trust, which was set up primarily to benefit public schools.
U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake ruled that the state was required to get approval from Congress before drawing down the principal of the trust, set up by the federal government at the time Arizona became a state.
In essence, the problem is this: the state took money that was there to benefit future generations of Arizona’s children in order to pay the current generation of students 70 percent of what the state owed to them.
And schools were so desperate for money that they went along with it.
Which matters not a whit, according to Wake.
“The schools’ current incentive to get extra money for their current needs is at odds with the interests of future Arizona students,” the judge said in his 35-page ruling.
Ducey’s office says Wake is flat wrong and besides that, Congress recently approved the two-year-old funding scheme – retroactively. It was buried in the ominous spending bill passed last week.
“We’re not terribly worried,” Ducey’s press aide, Daniel Scarpinato, said.
I’m guessing that’s code for “We’re TERRIBLY WORRIED” about the prospect of a federal judge ordering Arizona to repay $344 million – money Wake says was illegally taken from the trust over the last two years.
Polling has shown that Ducey is unpopular and vulnerable and we have a real shot here to unseat him. Click here to donate and get involved with Garcia’s campaign.