More than 8, 000 Uber and Lyft drivers have been denied licenses to operate in Massachusetts under a new, stricter state background check law , according to the Boston Globe . The most common reason? Issues with the driver’s license status, including suspensions. Under the new law, which went into effect in January, drivers for ride-hailing companies must undergo a two-part background check, one from the companies and one by the state. Out of 70, 789 applicants, 8.206 drivers were rejected, according to a state review. Hundreds were turned down because they had serious crimes on their record, including violent or sexual offenses. Others had drunk or reckless driving offenses. 51 applications came from alleged sex offenders. Uber has faced criticism in the past over its handling of background checks. District attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco filed a civil suit against the company in 2014, claiming it failed to unearth the criminal records of 25 drivers in those areas. But, both Uber and Lyft point out that the Massachusetts background check delves much deeper into a person’s history than theirs do, which is unfair to drivers who are trying to turn their lives around. “Under Massachusetts law, Lyft’s commercial background check provider, like all consumer reporting agencies, is legally prevented from looking back further than seven years into driver applicants’ histories, ” Lyft told the Boston Globe in a statement. “The state does not face the same limitation, which likely explains why a small percentage of our drivers failed the state’s background check while passing ours.” “Thousands of people in Massachusetts have lost access to economic opportunities as a result of a screening that includes an unfair and unjust indefinite lookback period, ” Uber said in its own statement. “We have an opportunity to repair the current system in the rules process so that people who deserve to work are not denied the opportunity.” Massachusetts is hardly the first state to push back against ride-hailing companies. Now that Uber and Lyft are becoming ubiquitous across the country, and with self-driving cars on the horizon, over 30 states have passed regulations to tackle some of the companies’ thornier issues. Via: Cnet Source: Boston Globe
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Over 8,000 Uber, Lyft drivers fail new Massachusetts background check
Some people probably already know this, but for those who don’t: UPS truck drivers don’t take left turns, and despite this usually resulting in longer route, they are saving millions of dollars in fuel costs. From a report: The company decided on eliminating left turns (or right turns in left-hand driving countries such as India) wherever possible after it found that drivers have to sit idly in the trucks while waiting to take the left turn to pass through traffic. So, it created an algorithm that eliminated left turns from drivers’ routes even if meant a longer journey. This meant that drivers do not have to wait in traffic to take a left turn and can take the right turn at junctions. Of course, the algorithm does not entirely eliminate left turns, but the number of left turns taken by UPS trucks is less than 10 percent of all turns made. Turns out that UPS was right — the idea really paid off. In 2005, a year after it announced that it will minimize left turns, the company said that the total distance covered by its 96, 000 trucks was reduced by 747, 000km, and 190, 000 litres of fuel had been saved. In 2011, Bob Stoffel, a UPS Senior Vice President, told Fortune that the company had reduced distance traveled by trucks by 20.4 million miles, and reduced CO2 emissions by 20, 000 metric tons, by not taking left turns. A recent report by The Independent says that the total reduction in distance traveled by UPS trucks now stands at 45.8 million miles, and there are 1, 100 fewer trucks in its fleet because of the algorithm. Even by conservative estimates, that’s tens of millions of dollar of savings in fuel costs. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deutsche Welle: The truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12, came to a halt due an automatic braking system, according to German media reports on Wednesday. The automatic braking system potentially saved the lives of many more people in the recent terrorist attack. An investigation by newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung” and broadcasters “NDR” and “WDR” found the Scania R 450 semi-trailer stopped after between 70 and 80 meters (250 feet). The system was reportedly engaged after sensing a collision. Previous reports speculated that the truck had driven erratically and stopped due to the heroic actions of the truck’s Polish driver, who lay fatally wounded in the cabin. In 2012 the European Union adopted regulations requiring all new trucks exceeding 3, 500 kilograms be fitted with advanced emergency braking systems. The systems initially alert drivers and then take evasive action. The regulation was adopted to reduce the number of rear end collisions by trucks. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 