Driver Distraction and Uber Accidents: Breaking it Down
This ridesharing giant, which is built on a foundation of distracted drivers, keeps getting bigger. Driver Distraction and Uber Accidents: Breaking it Down is key to understanding the risks behind the company’s growth. In 2024, the San Francisco-based company posted a record year in terms of bookings, revenue, profit, and most other critical areas. As is so often the case, shareholders, top managers, and executives make money hand over fist, while other people do most of the work and take most of the risk.
Companies like Uber cannot survive, let alone thrive, without good leadership at the top. These companies rely even more heavily on rank-and-file workers, which in this case are the men and women who drive Uber vehicles. These individuals do the best they can, but in many situations, Uber’s business model works against them, especially in terms of passenger safety. More on that below.
More importantly for our purposes, Uber passengers risk serious injury every time they book rides. Serious injury could occur in a vehicle collision or in the passenger area of the vehicle. Regardless of the source of the injury, a Newark personal injury attorney goes toe-to-toe against Uber’s lawyers and obtains maximum compensation for accident victims. This compensation usually includes money for economic losses, such as medical bills, and noneconomic losses such as pain and suffering.
Uber Injuries
Vehicle collisions and internal incidents, like driver assaults, cause various kinds of serious injuries. In this post, we’ll focus on one injury in particular, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a brain injury that both kinds of incidents often cause.
Yes, PTSD is a brain injury, not a processing disorder. Extreme stress, like the stress of a serious crash or an assault, triggers a chemical change inside the brain.
Stress expands the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls emotional responses. As the amygdala swells, the hippocampus (logical response center) shrinks.
The effect is like a cowboy riding a buckin’ bronco. As long as the cowboy (hippocampus) tightly holds the reins of the horse (amygdala), horse and rider function normally. But if the cowboy loosens his grip on the reins, the horse ryan wild.
About half of car crash victims suffer from PTSD. The symptoms, such as nightmares, flashbacks, depression, and anger, are often debilitating. PTSD treatment is difficult, to say the least. Available medicines usually treat the symptoms, but not the cause. Furthermore, finding the right kind of individual, group, and/or other kind of therapy is usually a trial-and-error process.
Car crash PTSD is also difficult to diagnose. PTSD symptoms usually mimic the symptoms of NSR (Normal Stress Response), a temporary condition that dissipates on its own.
Diagnosis issues are especially acute in sexual assault-related PTSD. Frequently, these victims begin suffering from the symptoms of PTSD almost immediately. But since the brain suppresses traumatic memories, it may be years later, or even decades later, before a doctor pinpoints the source of the PTSD.
No matter how much time has passed since the injury, an Atlantic County personal injury lawyer can usually obtain compensation in court.
Driver Distraction
Uber’s very brief onboarding process is largely responsible for distracted driver issues. Most people start driving for Uber less than a week after they submit paperwork. So, instead of carefully preparing for their jobs, Uber drivers learn everything on the fly. This compressed time period leads to three kinds of dangerous driver distraction.
Hand-Held Device Distraction
Instead of studying a map and learning how to get around, many Uber drivers over-relay on hand-held GPS navigation devices.
The dangers of hand-held devices are well-known, which is why New Jersey law bans the use of hand-held devices while driving. These gadgets combine all three kinds of driver distraction, which are:
- Visual (eyes off the road),
- Manual (hand off the wheel), and
- Cognitive (mind off driving).
If use of a hand-held device substantially causes a wreck, a Bergen County personal injury lawyer can use the negligence per se doctrine to obtain compensation. This rule applies if a tortfeasor (negligent driver) violates a safety law, and that violation substantially causes injury.
Sometimes, negligence per se is a presumption of negligence, as opposed to proof of negligence. In these cases, additional evidence is necessary to establish negligence.
A little evidence goes a long way in civil court. The burden of proof is only a preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not).
Hands-Free Device Distraction
Uber and other drivers may legally use these gadgets behind the wheel. However, legality is no guarantee of safety. Police work is legal and very unsafe. So is hands-free device use.
Hands-free gadgets are visually and cognitively distracting. Furthermore, these devices give drivers a false sense of security. Therefore, they often take unnecessary risks behind the wheel.
Therefore, Uber drivers who over-relay on hands-free GPS navigation devices are usually negligent. That’s especially true since Uber drivers and other commercial operators, such as truck and bus drivers, are held to a higher standard in New Jersey. For a commercial driver, almost any mishap, no matter how slight, usually constitutes negligence, or a lack of care.
Passenger Distraction
The brief Uber onboarding process cannot possibly prepare drivers to deal with unruly or intoxicated passengers, or even passengers, like us, who are annoying.
As discussed above, when Uber drivers are distracted because they’re dealing with passengers, these drivers are usually negligent. If negligence causes a vehicle collision or another injury, compensation is available.
On a related note, Uber drivers, much like property owners, have a duty to provide a safe and secure environment for passengers. This responsibility includes preventing passenger-on-passenger assaults and other passenger injuries.
In addition to safe drivers, Uber operators must also be fight referees. They must break up passenger disagreements before they become violent. People often safely multitask at work and at home. But it’s impossible to safely multitask behind the wheel.
The aforementioned “other passenger injuries” often include falls while getting into, or out of, an Uber. The driver has a duty of care to ensure that s/he picks up and drops off a passenger in a safe and secure location.
Uber drivers are negligent in these situations, but the company is financially responsible for the resulting damages, at least in most cases. Various legal theories, such as respondeat superior employer liability, negligent supervision, and negligent hiring, may apply.
Contact a Savvy Bergen County Lawyer
Injury victims are entitled to significant compensation. For a free consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer in Newark, contact CourtLaw. We do not charge upfront legal fees in these matters.
