Why Some Amazon Delivery Drivers Hate Its Safety Monitoring App (mashable.com) 63
Amazon is using AI cameras to monitor drivers of its delivery vans for safety issues — but also a second driver safety app on their phones.
Though it's named Mentor, Mashable reports that "it doesn't seem to be helping..." CNBC talked to drivers who said the app mostly invades their privacy or miscalculates dangerous driving behavior. One driver said even though he didn't answer a ringing phone, the app docked points for using a phone while driving. Another worker was flagged for distracted driving at every delivery stop she made.
The incorrect tracking has real consequences, ranging from restricted payouts and bonuses to job loss. The app gives a safety score which is used to rank drivers and compare them to colleagues.
The App Store description calls this "a little friendly competition!"
CNBC reports that one driver even created a YouTube video showing how Amazon's delivery van drivers could appease the app: by wrapping their cellphone in a sweater and then shoving it in their glovebox.
Otherwise, "If your device moves at all, it's going to count against you."
Though it's named Mentor, Mashable reports that "it doesn't seem to be helping..." CNBC talked to drivers who said the app mostly invades their privacy or miscalculates dangerous driving behavior. One driver said even though he didn't answer a ringing phone, the app docked points for using a phone while driving. Another worker was flagged for distracted driving at every delivery stop she made.
The incorrect tracking has real consequences, ranging from restricted payouts and bonuses to job loss. The app gives a safety score which is used to rank drivers and compare them to colleagues.
The App Store description calls this "a little friendly competition!"
CNBC reports that one driver even created a YouTube video showing how Amazon's delivery van drivers could appease the app: by wrapping their cellphone in a sweater and then shoving it in their glovebox.
Otherwise, "If your device moves at all, it's going to count against you."
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I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years late
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It's my new hobby: make the n@zi jackasses seethe by posting anti-racism rhetoric.
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Steal a comment (Score:2)
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Maybe Slashdot need an app to penalize editors that post too many dupes?
Hang the beast from your rearview mirror (Score:2)
How does the scoring work if the phone is hung from an inside center point like a rear-view mirror? Obviously as long as possible yet avoiding internal taps.
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Think about that for a minute - a weight, hanging by some cord from the rear-view mirror? It's going to be swinging all over the place.
The app is going to think the driver is weaving all over the road...
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Well then put the phone on a gimbal!
Company full of psychopaths? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, do the people at Amazon management and tech not think about the dystopian world they are creating with this stuff? I mean, how many of them would like to have to work with these sorts of tools shoved in their faces all day? And then the sheer cold heartless of trying to twist it into a 'safety' thing so they can claim the moral high ground. I bet none of them would want it, but they will all justify it by believing that because they are highly skilled white collar works it won't happen to them and that the delivery drivers should have just worked harder at school or something.
That's the sort of thinking that helped entrench the feudal system for centuries - you had a bunch of workers who weren't quite as abused as those at the bottom, so they actively supported the system to protect what little they had. It's like stockholm syndrome at a management level.
Come on already. I think the disruption in terms of the end of bricks and mortar retail is a big enough shift for communities to digest. I don't see why these psychopaths have to destroy basic hard-won labour rights as well. It's just petty, and in the end, it will come for them as well. I still remember in the earl 2000s when us electronics engineers thought that our cosy, well paid work doing PCB design wouldn't get outsourced along with the manufacturing guys, and then it did.
Re:Company full of psychopaths? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Company full of psychopaths? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they realize what they are doing. The entire exercise has nothing to do with money or safety or laws. It's about dominance. It's about breaking the will of the drivers and making them ever more subordinate. The "errors", the injustices, are by design. This is what megacorps will do to us all the larger they get.
Fuck amazon and everything but I seriously doubt this, that's not how coprorations work. Some higher-up probably noticed accident statistics and asked to improve them to reduce downtiem and payouts. Some underling thought they'd have a great story for a promotion if they solved it with an app full of buzz words, and here we are.
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At my ex employer, they knew fully well that their monitoring system was totally broken and unfair during testing, and they pushed it into production anyway. They then assigned a team of managers to "adjust" the numbers after collection to try to wipe out the unfair anomalies.
Guess how well that worked, and how high turnover was? Guess how much upper management cared about that? I was one of the lucky ones who was able to save money and could afford to quit. Many other people lost their jobs for all sor
Re:Company full of psychopaths? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good Comment.
It's like China's social credit system combined with a Black Mirror episode.
Amazon will find all it creates is resentment, mistrust and lower productivity.
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As long as they dominate the market, I doubt they ever really care about the bottom line.
We all like to think corporations are all about money and pleasing investors, but at the executive level, it's more about ego and power. Having billions in the bank is just bragging rights.
Re:Company full of psychopaths? (Score:5, Informative)
Any corporation of a larger size losses resemblances to a human being simply because too many agendas and policies are competing with one another and so the actions by a corporation in itself end up looking like those of an emotionless machine, a sociopathic or psychopathic organism. One cannot expect compassion from a corporation, because these simply don't have any to offer.
All the control and monitoring by Amazon of their work force is turning the workplaces into military-style boot camps where workers get drilled to perform a singular task to perfection, even when it exhausts them or makes them sick, in which case they'll get replaced. Amazon exploits human labour to the maximum, strips humans of their dignity and turns them into to "worker drones" should they choose to stay in their job. It's a classic min-max strategy only here applied to a work force.
It's understandable to blame Amazon for their behaviour, but for a corporation does blame have no meaning and so it's just frankly a choice of the people themselves. One doesn't have to buy from Amazon nor does one have to work for them. Anyone who does has to blame themselves.
Simply don't work there nor buy from them. As long as people do so do they give justification to Amazon to continue to with their exploitation. And when their workers then don't start a union, which Amazon is clearly very afraid of or else would they not be fighting so hard against it, then it gives further justification to Amazon to continue. An old saying then comes to mind: it sometimes first needs to get worse before it gets better.
Personally do I no longer care for Amazon. I use them for browsing, but I'll simply buy online from local shops. There are still many people working at Amazon who need to make a living and I won't judge them for their choice. It's just not one I would make nor am I willing to support Amazon any longer.
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Screw that! I'd work elsewhere. I'd buy elsewhere.
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Simply don't work there
If jobs were so plentiful that everyone working there had a better option, this would never have become an issue in the first place.
Re:Company full of psychopaths? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course the alternatives could be doing similar things. I'm sure Amazon would gladly sell this technology like everything else they do. Genius idea that. In any case, we have choices and should exercise them.
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It's easy for me to boycott Amazon, but a little harder for me to give up Whole Foods, which is the only grocery near my office.
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And that goes double for cockpit voice recorders in airliners!
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The problem is these sort of things are actually standard for commercial vehicles. I've seen many dash cams for commercial vehicles - they monitor the driver, the cab, the road ahead, the road behind and even the load.
The cab cam is to monitor that the driver isn't using the vehicle to pick up friends and others while on the job.
The main difference though is this is for commercial vehicles - those trucks and vans owned by businesses and driven by employees. Garbage trucks, semi trucks, delivery vans and tru
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Of course management knows they are aresholes. Did you really think they give a shit about the people below them ?
Maybe a clue is they pay thesmelves many times more than the people below, if that doesnt tell you they are selfish greedy aresholes i dont know some people are born stupid.
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Greater socio and economic issues aside, I often ask people to look at their own lives and how they behave.
When we put our kid in daycare, we signed up for remote monitoring, so we could watch our kid. My wife was far more vigilant than myself. Here's the thing, WE chose to monitor these daycare workers. Heck, we paid an extra fee for access. Sure, we could tell ourselves WE did it to make sure our child wasn't being abused. In reality, most parents used it for other purposes. I'd hear parents complain that
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"Seriously, do the people at Amazon management and tech not think about the dystopian world they are creating with this stuff? "
No, not really. Oh, a few of them may but by and large, no, they just don't care.
They don't think it'll ever be used on them and if they do, they assume it'll be "fair", whatever that means. But mostly no, it's not something they spend any real time thinking about.
Countries ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd really love to know which countries they were using this in [the article mentioned 5]. I would have thought this stuff would violate the law in quite a few countries.
Why? (Score:2)
Because every employee hates it. Control tower workers, air traffic controllers, rail dispatchers, bank employees, supermarket employees, ...get in line.
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This more or less my philosophy about work, but phrased a little more harshly than I'd have put it.
Still, I don't disagree.
No one is going to work me to death, period. You'll get value for your money, but my career isn't a fucking fire sale. No discounts here.
"Get the greatest amount of money for the least amount of work you can do."
Nothing in there says "don't do a good job" but I won't do a $500 job for $100. Pay your people fairly and things almost always go better.
Libel. (Score:3)
To falsely state that someone is using their phone while driving, a crime, is slander and libel. Any lawyer worth his salt could make Amaz- nevermind corporations are exempt from the law. #RazeTheWarehouse
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Yeah, it's only a law for the little people.
None of that applies to the owners of "our" government.
Re:Libel. (Score:4, Interesting)
Internet lawyer strikes again.
No, it would not be libel OR slander. If I walk up to you and tell you that you are a murderer, I have not slandered you (unless I did it in front of others so they could hear). Slander and libel is about damage to a person's reputation. If I tell you that you are a murderer, the only way I have damaged your reputation is if you believe me (and if that's the case, I think we have bigger issues). To commit libel or slander, I have to (at a minimum) say or publish those remarks so that others can hear or see them. Then the possibility exists that I have damaged your reputation. Until then, the most I have done is to hurt your feelings.
As I'm reading it, this is an app used internally by Amazon. Amazon is making a determination to use internally. That doesn't damage your reputation outside the company. The damage to reputation is only within the company, but a company operates as a single entity, and the data collection from this app is being conducted as part of official business. So it would be akin to trying to sue me for slander because my eyes told my brain something that wasn't true.
Now there might be some other sort of privacy concerns or something where this somehow violates some other sort of law...not likely, but possible. But if that is the case, it's not going to be a libel or slander law.
And the above is probably all moot, anyway. You probably agreed to something either in your employment contract or in the terms of service of the app, so their ass is probably double covered.
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> The damage to reputation is only within the company
Except when you get shitcanned by that company based on these dubious readings and can't get a job as a delivery driver for a different company because when they check the references, they get told you were fired for being a dangerous driver and they have the data to "prove" it.
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You will have a valid point as soon as you can show that amazon does share that sort of info with other companies. But I'm pretty sure what they do is just verify dates of employment, like pretty much every company out there these days.
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The damage doesn't have to just be reputation as that's subjective, it can also be monetary damages (losing your job or bonuses because of false claims) or physical harm (getting assaulted because someone said you were a pedo).
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The damage doesn't have to just be reputation as that's subjective, it can also be monetary damages (losing your job or bonuses because of false claims) or physical harm (getting assaulted because someone said you were a pedo).
And all of those would be consequences of damage to your reputation. Libel and slander are about damage to reputation. You are quantifying the extent of that damage.
Also to clarify, when you say "losing your job or bonuses" you would be talking about your NEXT job, right? Unless you have a contract guaranteeing your job at Amazon or guaranteeing you specific bonuses, you have no grounds to sue Amazon over the loss of either because they improperly determined you were a bad driver. And if you do have such a
Simple solution. (Score:3)
Just don’t deal with Amazon. I’ve never bought anything from them and never will.
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Using a phone's accelerometer (Score:2)
To detect the 'naughty' behaviors of drivers?
Gee, I can't figure out what could possibly go wrong with this! /s
Seems whoever thought of this never even tried to see how those sensors actually behave in real world conditions.
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The workaround of stuffing it into a cubby or glovebox inside a sweater or similar is simply removing these transients, allowing the device to more accurately measure the vehicle's accelerations.
Re: Using a phone's accelerometer (Score:2)
"The workaround of stuffing it into a cubby or glovebox inside a sweater or similar is simply removing these transients, allowing the device to more accurately measure the vehicle's accelerations."
And the number of drivers who would actually go through these procedures amounts close to zero.
Instead of ponying up for a proper, fedicated, big brother Orwellian system, they instead went the cheapo route.
You get what you pay for.
Mentor by eDriving LLC? (Score:2)
Is this about the mentor app by edriving llc in the uk? The one that comes in many flavors, specifically the one that has a version customized for amazon dsps?
Definitely sounds like a terrible idea. As a consumer, i care mostly about getting my package from amazon reliably when they promise it. Iâ(TM)m not sure I particularly care about the driving behavior of the delivery drivers.
Actually, i do care - in the sense that i want to be safe and responsible drivers, but that is totally disjoint to whether
For safety, turn the 'phone off (Score:1)
Surely, in the interest of safety, Amazon drivers should turn their 'phones off whilst driving?
heee (Score:1)
Lol "Safety" (Score:1)
To be fair, I am sure there's dispute process requiring triplelicate forms to be completed, then legal reviews it, then you have a mediation hearing (only outside of work hours so it costs you and not the company), then three months later you might get you $10.23 paid out, less tax of course. Add to that, you dispute more than three times instead of sucking it up then so