Yea the laws uber broke were mostly bad regulations that nobody cared about and ultimately didn't harm anyone (other than in a competition harms incumbents).

But beta testing their cars on real streets could lead to disaster. Even from a non-legal PR risk perspective, it's dicey.

If one of these things runs over a cute kid, the attempt to skirt the law will backfire. That said challenging the law isn't necessarily skirting the law, but that's how techcrunch is portraying it. I'm too lazy to read the docket of the case.