Responsibility is a pervasive character trait. The best indicator of lack of responsibility is criminal history. When employers blind themselves to criminal history because government requires it, because social pressure requires it, or because they think it is the cool and hip thing to do, irresponsible people are going to be hired.
For some jobs, that may be okay. If a person is under constant supervision or doing a job where irresponsibility doesn't cause much damage, opportunities can be created for offenders to prove themselves and go straight.
And then there are jobs where people's lives depend on an employee doing the right thing when no one else is there.
Greg Bensinger and Alejandro Lazo report for the WSJ:
For some jobs, that may be okay. If a person is under constant supervision or doing a job where irresponsibility doesn't cause much damage, opportunities can be created for offenders to prove themselves and go straight.
And then there are jobs where people's lives depend on an employee doing the right thing when no one else is there.
Greg Bensinger and Alejandro Lazo report for the WSJ:
The test operator in the Uber Technologies Inc. self-driving car that killed an Arizona woman was a convicted felon with a history of traffic citations who wasn't watching the road before the accident happened, facts that raise new questions about the company's testing process for autonomous technology.* * *
Test operators, also known as safety drivers, are trained to keep monitoring the road so they can take the wheel or hit the brake when autonomous vehicles, which are still in test mode, act erratically.Self-driving cars have great potential to solve a variety of problems, including mobility for people who can't drive and the intractable "last mile" problem for public transportation. With further progress, they will likely be safer than the majority of human drivers.
The driver in the Uber car on Sunday, whom police identified as Rafael Vasquez, was looking down for several seconds as the car moved along at about 40 miles an hour, the video shows.
The driver, who couldn't be reached for comment, was convicted and received a five-year sentence in Maricopa County for attempted armed robbery in 2000, according to Arizona Department of Corrections records, and served the sentence concurrently with a one-year sentence for a false-statement conviction in 1999.* * *"The driver was eyes down most of the time, indicating complacency and not maintaining proper monitoring," Missy Cummings, a professor of mechanical engineering and material science at Duke University, said in an email. She testified to lawmakers in 2016 that autonomous vehicles would lead to a fatality at some point.* * *Uber generally screens for violations or criminal history dating back seven years, part of a policy meant to give potential drivers a second chance after prior bad decisions, according to an Uber spokeswoman. Some violations, like sex crimes, may be unsurmountable, no matter when they were committed.
Uber's technology isn't there yet, which is why they correctly had the safety drivers. Failure to screen the safety drivers for indications of personal irresponsibility, like a history of armed robbery, was grossly irresponsible.
Leave a comment