Two individuals rented cars from Turo, a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform, and used them to commit acts of violence earlier this week.
First, a military veteran driving a Ford F-150 Lightning crashed into a crowd of people, killing at least 15. Then, an active duty Green Beret rented a Tesla Cybertruck, parked it in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, and allegedly blew it up. The driver died of suicide.
On Friday, Turo chief executive Andre Haddad said in a statement that he was “outraged” considering “how egregiously the two individuals who committed these horrific crimes abused our platform.” He noted that Turo is working “around the clock” to understand how the platform could have been misused in this way.
And here’s the rub. How could Turo or any similar platform prevent this?
Turo has been described as Airbnb for cars, a platform where car owners can rent out their cars for extra cash or even as a full-time business; many Turo hosts rent out three or more vehicles on the platform at a time.
Turo says it screens each tenant through a “multi-layered, data science-based trust and security algorithm” called the Turo Risk Score, and that the company uses 50 internal and external data sources to build, maintain and improve it. point. It’s not clear what that means – does Turo run normal criminal background checks? – and Turo did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification.
Over the years, some bad actors have managed to slip through the cracks, including Turo in controversy after cars on its platform were found to be used for human and drug trafficking. And people claiming to be hosts regularly post on the Turo subreddit about their cars being rented out to people with criminal histories.
But even if Turo’s background checks were flawless, the two perpetrators of this week’s crimes in New Orleans and Las Vegas had valid driver’s licenses, clean criminal records and were decorated members of the U.S. military, according to Haddad.
“They could have gotten on any plane, checked into any hotel, or rented a car or truck from any traditional rental car chain,” Haddad said. “We do not believe these two individuals would have been flagged by anyone – including law enforcement.”
Turo says it has facilitated 27 million trips over 12 years, and less than 0.10% have ended in a serious incident like a vehicle theft.
So what’s next for Turo after this? Haddad noted that in addition to investing in improving the risk assessment algorithm, he has also assembled a team of former law enforcement professionals to help assess future risk.
“We are consulting with national security and counterterrorism experts to learn more about how we can get even better and play our part in preventing something like this from happening again,” Haddad said.
