Yes, but no. The point that was trying to be made was that he was hired for a task that's fundamentally extremely difficult for humans. You can pay a person all you want to stare at paint drying so they can note down the exact moment it's perfectly dry, but don't be surprised when they do a poor job.

The guy screwed up. Uber knew he almost certainly would. I won't say the guy isn't responsible at all, but pretending this is purely on him and Uber bears 0% of the responsibility is just silly. Humans are not capable of anything and everything simply because they are provided pay.

My point was that what the driver did was not negligence, it was deliberate inattention.

If she had been negligent, i.e., too tired to notice the pedestrian, that would have been a different matter. If she had been paying attention most of the time but inadvertently reached over to drink some coffee, that would have been a different matter.

But she wasn't too tired, and she wasn't momentarily reaching for a drink; she was simply choosing not to pay attention to her job so she could do something else instead.

You're still missing what I'm trying to say, I think. I'm not talking about fatigue, or brief inattention, or anything like that.

I'm saying that the inattention was basically a given. Yeah, at some point the driver went and grabbed a phone. It may have been fiddling with junk in the car, or their fingers, or day dreaming to the extent they were unaware of the world around them.

Yeah, they grabbed a phone. Is that really any different from any of the above? I don't think so. Particularly considering how ingrained the reflex is to grab and fiddle with a phone when bored is. I wouldn't be surprised if they never consciously decided to pick the thing up.

The task was simply unreasonable. Uber should have foreseen this problem and implemented systems to aide and monitor their drivers.

although I agree Uber bears most of the responsibility the analogy was ridiculous in not being fundamentally extremely difficult but basically impossible.

Aside from this, if the car had been driving over the speed suitable for the conditions at the time the fall person had plenty of time to note that and take over, in that case it was more like huh, the paint is drying but it looks like it's going to rain .... long time looking like it's going to rain ... oh no should have put the covers on!

But I'm betting the need to take over and drive is not properly given to the fall person either.

When people are bored they get distracted and do other things. This is well known human nature and very few people are suited to this sort of task. The people who set up the self-driving car should have known better than the uneducated poor person who is being sacrificed.