Why Brands Should Think Small (Agency)

By Chris Mollo, Co-Founder & COO, Drumroll

Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of talk about the influx of small agencies within our industry. These companies – in 50-or-less team member range – are winning Lions at Cannes, closing million dollar deals, and are giving the likes of McCann, Ogilvy, and Grey a run for their money.

While the legacy agencies exude gravitas and make for great bragging rights while you’re sipping champagne in the South of France, they aren’t always necessarily what’s best for your brand.

With the impeding New Year, what better time to begin thinking differently – smaller, even. Clients can benefit greatly from utilizing a more modest agency’s services. Here are a few reasons to hire – and think – smaller.

Big Fish Mentality: To a big agency, sometimes a new client is just another account – yet another company to highlight on its website. But, a big brand means everything to a small agency. You’ll be paired with a specialized and senior-level team dedicated to delivering high-touch attention and high-quality work. The pitch team is usually “the team” doing the work, so you’ll be getting the thought leadership that won the pitch in the day-to-day trenches.

Lean and Mean: Small agencies are simply nimbler. With less employees, fewer meetings to schedule, and limited politics, independent agencies are typically faster to react to client calls or campaign snafus. With less internal process and little red-tape to get around, it’s easier to get to the heart of what makes brands tick and, ultimately, to the great ideas that propel them forward.

Risky Business: The big guys can sometimes follow antiquated processes – it’s how their companies were built. Younger, learner agencies, on the other hand, usually have more modern systems and workflow designed to more easily get to where true innovation stems. They are willing to take more risks. Maybe it’s because they’ll always have something to prove – a chip on their metaphorical shoulder that they’ll never be able to shake? Regardless, high-motivation is the driver, and it’s resulted in some of the most groundbreaking ads this year if you have paid attention to the awards shows and trade publications.

No Baggage to Claim: Small agencies often don't bring baggage to the table. They don't have history trying everything in the book and talking themselves out of what has been done. As such, they are more willing to think outside the box to get to the promised land with an “there’s always a way “attitude. With anything being possible, your brand won’t be confined to or pigeonholed into running a campaign that’s been tried, tested, and “just fine.”

Culturally Connected: Independent agencies possess stronger cultures that their employees believe in. Why do you think there’s so much more turn-over at the legacy agencies? The culture is either lacking, or the team member wasn’t a culture fit in the first place, merely a body hired to fill a seat. Small agencies typically evoke a feeling of family, which undoubtedly permeates into the work and helps to inspire people working on your account.

With 2017 upon us, go ahead and consider a smaller shop. You might be really surprised by their innovation and expertise.  It could be the kick in the butt your brand needs.  

American Cities Losing The Most Jobs This Year

 

The U.S. economy added roughly 2.4 million workers over the past year. Over the same period, the unemployment rate fell from 5.0% to 4.9%, close to the lowest it has been in nearly a decade. The 1.7% employment growth nationwide was not uniform, and some areas lost a substantial share of workers.

To determine the cities that lost the most jobs, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most cities added jobs in past 12 months, and most have posted unemployment declines. In 75 metro areas, however, there was a net loss in total employment. The Lafayette, Louisiana metro area had the greatest loss workers, with total employment falling by 4.5% since October 2015.

One major factor driving employment changes across the United States is industrial composition. Continued outsourcing and automation has lowered international demand for American manufacturing, and the downturn in the price of petroleum has hurt the oil and gas sector. Nationwide, the worst performing sectors were manufacturing, information, and mining, logging, and construction.

Click here to see the American cities losing the most jobs this year.

Cities with economies that heavily depend on these industries tended to have the most job loss. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Martin Kohli, chief regional economist at the BLS, explained that a “large concentration of employment in energy and construction-related industries has definitely been negative in the last few years for communities.” In many cases, a major round of layoffs or plant shutdowns contributed to employment declines in the past year.

People are not likely to move to a city without a job or some other opportunity available. As a result, the distribution of employment growth across the country mirrors today’s domestic migration patterns. Kohli added that residents of the Northeast and Midwest, where a majority of the metro areas are losing workers, have been relocating to major cities in the Sun Belt, which is gaining the most workers.

Employment tends to increase as unemployment declines. In metropolitan areas losing the most workers, employment declines contributed to labor force declines and a rise in unemployment. In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for example, the 14,200 workers lost in Oklahoma City was among the most of any metro area. At the same time, the labor force shrank by a total of 9,000 workers, while area unemployment rate rose from 3.6% to 4.4%.

To identify the cities losing the most workers, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed metropolitan statistical areas with the largest employment decline from October 2015 through October 2016. Unemployment rates, the size of the labor force, and employment levels are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and are seasonally adjusted. Industry-specific growth rates for the same period are from the Current Employment Survey (CES), a monthly BLS survey. Educational attainment is from the 2015 American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau.

These are the cities losing the most jobs.

5. Mansfield, OH

• Employment change: -2.33%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 50,576

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 49,399

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 5.6%

Cities without a talented, educated workforce often rely on one dominant, low-skilled industry and may be more vulnerable to changes in commodity prices and other market shifts than more diversified economies. Nearly one in five workers in Mansfield works in manufacturing, and just 14.4% of adults in the metro area have at least a bachelor’s degree. As demand for American manufacturing continues to decline, Mansfield’s reliance on the industry may have partially caused accelerated employment decline over the past year. The number of employed workers in the city decreased by 2.3% in 2016, more than nearly any other metro area.

4. Shreveport-Bossier City, LA

• Employment change: -2.35%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 180,977

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 176,731

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 6.8%

Employment in the Shreveport-Bossier City area decreased by over 4,200 workers in the past year. During the same period, nearly an equal amount of people left the labor force.

Following the statewide trend, the Shreveport area is losing workers in the oil and gas sector. Unlike other areas in Louisiana that are more dependent on the oil and gas industry, however, Shreveport has a more diverse economy, and employment losses in this industry have had a less dramatic effect on the area's overall employment. Still, due to falling oil prices and reduced natural gas production at the Haynesville Shale -- a rock formation rich in natural gas -- the industry's job losses accounted for a sizable share of the area's 2.3% employment decrease.

3. Houma-Thibodaux, LA

• Employment change: -3.74%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 91,738

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 88,311

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 6.7%

The number of employed workers in the Houma-Thibodaux area decreased by around 3,400 in the past year. While area employment declined by 3.7%, the number of workers increased by 1.7% nationwide. A large share of the area’s employment decline resulted from a shrinking oil and gas sector. Following a drop in oil prices and the first decrease in North American oil production in years, many oil workers nationwide have lost their jobs. The effects of these industry declines are exaggerated in Houma-Thibodaux, where a large share of residents are employed in the sector.

2. Casper, WY

• Employment change: -3.77%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 40,156

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 38,644

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 6.6%

The Casper metro area lost around 1,500 employed workers in the past year. This 3.8% decrease was largely caused by a declining coal mining industry in Wyoming. During the first quarter of 2016, coal production nationwide was the lowest it has been in 35 years, with Wyoming among the regions whose production has declined the most. The Casper metro area is around 100 miles from America’s two largest coal mines. Earlier this year, both of these mines announced large layoffs.

1. Lafayette, LA

• Employment change: -4.46%

• No. of jobs Oct. 2015: 210,224

• No. of jobs Oct. 2016: 200,845

• Unemployment rate Oct. 2016: 7.1%

The Lafayette metro area lost around 9,400 workers in the past year. Employment in the area fell by around 4.5%, even as nationwide employment increased by 1.7%. Following a trend of declining manufacturing employment nationwide, Lafayette’s manufacturing sector shed the most jobs of any industry. The employment declines likely led to a large share of residents giving up looking for work or leaving the area. The overall labor force decreased by nearly 8,500 in the past year. This 3.8% decline in labor force was the largest of any U.S. metro area.

Deregulation That Will Make the Home Mortgage Market Work Better: Eliminating Rigid Income Documentation Rules

The incoming Trump administration has made very clear that eliminating regulations of all types was a major agenda item. The question is whether or not they can do that effectively, and the home mortgage market will be a good test case. New home construction today is running well below what would ordinarily be expected at the current phase of the business expansion, and a major cause may be some of the regulations imposed in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

I underscore "some" because regulation is not a quantity - something that conservatives want less of and liberals want more of. Some regulations are good and some are bad, and the objective ought to be to get rid of the bad ones and retain or even strengthen the good ones as needed. A good regulation is one that makes the market work better, and a bad regulation is one that doesn't, which makes it worse than no regulation.

It often takes a great deal of knowledge and wisdom to fashion a good regulation, and here also you have a political split. Conservatives usually have less confidence than liberals that regulators have the competence necessary to fashion good regulations. But what we are going to see in the next year or so is how well a new batch of conservative regulators do in identifying the bad regulations that need to be axed. This article aims to give the new mortgage regulators a head-start by identifying a particularly bad regulation directed to mortgage documentation requirements.

In the decade prior to the financial crisis, documentation requirements evolved from full doc for every borrower to a range of requirements, from full doc to no doc, with 5 categories in-between. The less complete the documentation, the higher the price of the mortgage and the larger the required down payment and credit score. These three poles of the underwriting system were flexible in the sense that a good score on one could offset a poor score on another.

That sensible market-based system worked well until the housing bubble emerged in the early years of this century, when lenders and borrowers alike came to believe that house prices would rise forever. When house prices continually rise, it is very difficult to make a bad loan because borrowers unable to pay can sell their houses at a profit.

In that atmosphere, large numbers of borrowers elected less than full documentation so that they could exaggerate their incomes and purchase more costly houses, while many lenders accommodated them by relaxing their standards and reducing their surveillance. When the bubble burst in 2006, mortgage defaults and foreclosures rose to levels not seen since the 1930s.

The Federal Government in response imposed a range of new regulations, one of which was to eliminate all documentation options other than full documentation, and to make it an absolute requirement. No longer could inadequate documentation be offset by good credit or large down payment. That is when I began to receive letters from self-employed loan applicants whose applications were rejected because they could not document adequate income, notwithstanding that their credit was pristine and they were making a substantial down payment. Many of these rejected borrowers are small business owners who collectively are important contributors to economic growth.

In an important recent article in The Journal of Finance, Brent W. Ambrose, James Conklin and Jiro Yoshida show that the income exaggerations that played a major role in the boom and bust were concentrated among borrowers who could have documented their incomes with W-2s but chose not to so they could lie. Self-employed borrowers did not lie about their incomes.

The implications for regulatory reform are very clear. Full income documentation should be required only for those with incomes shown on W-2s. Self-employed applicants should have access to multiple documentation options, and underwriters should have discretionary power to balance the option selected against the applicant's credit score and down payment.

This is one small yet important example of a bad regulation that is easily fixable when there is a will to fix it. In the weeks to come, I plan to identify a number of others.

For more information on mortgages or to shop for a mortgage in an unbiased environment, visit my website The Mortgage Professor

With No Hope Under Trump, Gender Pay Gap Action Goes Local

The Republican capture of the Oval Office along with majorities House and Senate is bad news for women when it comes to closing the gender pay gap in the next four to eight years. Nothing new there -- we've already endured more than a half century with zero progress on gender pay equity in the U. S. Congress, and some not inconsequential losses in the courts since the Equal Pay Act passed way back in 1963. The gap in women's pay compared to that of men for full-time year-round work now at 79.6 cents on the dollar has been stuck for over a decade.

But there is some good news: The action is moving to states and cities. California amended its decades-old pay laws in 2015 to require equal pay for "substantially similar" work, prevent use of the ill-defined "factors other than sex" justification for pay differentials, and prohibit retaliation for disclosing pay to coworkers. Following California's lead on disclosure, in 2016 Maryland expanded its own law, going beyond pay disparities. The state now also prohibits employers from channeling workers into less favorable career tracks or limiting employment opportunities because of sex or gender identity. Missouri issued guidelines for employers to voluntarily conduct self - audits to identify and remedy gender-based pay disparities, and make salary ranges by title public to job applicants.

New state measures are without question good news, but the most innovative action is coming from cities. And it's bi-partisan. It started with Albuquerque in 2015, when Republican Mayor Richard Berry pushed through an ordinance with the help of democrats on the city council requiring gender pay equity reporting by contractors as a condition of bidding for city business. It was the first such city action in the nation, and has since been mimicked in one form or another by San Francisco, Oakland, Erie County New York, and several smaller jurisdictions.

In 2016, Mayor Martin Walsh, a Democrat, signed the Boston Women's Workforce Council 100% Talent Compact, a different first-of-its-kind initiative. Companies signing the Compact (over 180 so far) agree to provide the Council with anonymous payroll data broken down by sex, race, job category, and length of employment. The data will be used to provide an accurate measurement of the wage gap and to help employers develop solutions later on.

There's no doubt that more ground-breaking city action is on the horizon. Since it's well known that when women start careers at a lower salaries than male counterparts the gap follows them throughout their working lives, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently signed an Executive Order prohibiting city agencies from asking about prior salary history when interviewing job applicants. Advocates in New York, Philadelphia, and D.C. are pushing for bills with similar prohibitions for all city employers, inspired by a Massachusetts measure taking effect in 2018. Others are sure to follow suit.

With the federal government's most likely action on gender pay disparities in the coming administration being "none," women must look to local and state jurisdictions to move the needle on equal pay. Fortunately it looks like that's already happening.

Can Investments in "Green Infrastructure" Help Coastal Cities Survive Climate Change?

Will Tucker also contributed to this story, which is cross-posted on Ecosystem Marketplace

The city of Chicago is planting millions of trees and "greening" its alleys to mop up stormwater and reduce the urban "heat island" effect, while the City of Hoboken, New Jersey - which took the brunt of Hurricane Sandy's impact in 2012 - is restoring marshes and turning vacant land into a "resiliency park" that will mop up at least one million gallons of floodwater.

Both cities are featured in a working paper called Roadmap to Support Local Climate Resilience, which grew out of October's Rising Tides Summit in New Hampshire, where 36 mayors from cities in 18 of the 23 coastal US states gathered with federal disaster relief officials to chart a course towards resilience in the age of climate change.

The mayors came from across the political spectrum - nearly half, 17, were Republicans, while 16 were Democrats, and three were Independents - but all agreed that sea levels were rising because of man-made climate change, and that nature-based "green" infrastructure - such as mangroves for coastal protection and wetlands for flood management - is part of the solution.

Unfortunately, they also identified a massive funding gap, and this was before the election of Donald Trump as President opened a perceived leadership gap as well.

"We need either the state - which doesn't want to get involved because the governor doesn't believe in sea-level rise - or the federal government to come up with funds," said James C. Cason (R), Mayor of Coral Gables, Florida, during a media call arranged by the World Resources Institute (WRI), publisher of the Roadmap paper.

"As people come through our redevelopment process, we require them to consider green infrastructure," said Dawn Zimmer (D), Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, who tapped the federal Environmental Protection Agency to fund its resiliency park. "We're encouraging it as people go through our planning boards and our zoning boards, but we're also looking at ways that we can incentivize it and make it happen across the board."

"Several cities are embedding nature-based solutions into their resiliency planning," said C. Forbes Tompkins, who compiled the report for the World Resource Institute. "But they don't know where the funding is going to come from."

Some cities have begun tapping their water fees to develop green infrastructure. Philadelphia, for example, funnels sewage fees into programs that turn concrete "gray" infrastructure into absorbent systems that better handle water runoff, while Denver puts its water fees into forest conservation to keep the surrounding watershed healthy.

New research shows a growing willingness on the part of cities and even the private sector to invest in such initiatives worldwide, and may offer insight into challenges faced by coastal cities.

Alliances for Green Infrastructure: State of Watershed Investment 2016 Report Webinar

$25 Billion For Watershed Investment

In a separate report called Alliances for Green Infrastructure: State of Watershed Investment 2016, also released today, Forest Trends' Ecosystem Marketplace looks strictly at investments in watershed protection or enhancement which involve a clear transaction of payments in exchange for ecological services. Such programs appear to work best when a clear environmental benefit can be translated into a clear economic benefit.

The "buyers" and "sellers" vary from place to place, and can involve a government paying landholders a direct subsidy to reward good land stewardship practices, or it could be a beverage company paying local farmers near its water source to reduce their pesticide use, alleviating the need for costly on-site water treatment. Or it might look like multiple water users - for instance, a city government, the local water utility, and companies - paying into a "water fund" for greater impact.

Once considered obscure, such programs have now matured to the point that, when asked to identify the biggest barriers to "scaling up" watershed investments, only 11% of program administrators reported having a difficult time securing demand (e.g., finding willing "buyers").

"A lot of programs are telling us that capacity is an issue: things like managing funds and identifying project sites, demonstrating benefits to stakeholders and potential buyers," said Genevieve Bennett, lead author of the Ecosystem Marketplace report, during a launch webinar this week.

"In this space there's a common wisdom that the constraint is money - that people aren't willing to pay for green infrastructure," Bennett explained. "But one of the things we saw this year...is that there actually is quite a lot of finance waiting in the wings for green infrastructure. At minimum, it's hundreds of millions of dollars, and it might be much higher."

Bennett said there's a clear need for more "shovel-ready projects" that are prepared to accept that funding.

Speaking at the same event, Daniel Shemie, Director of Strategy for Water Funds within The Nature Conservancy's Global Water team, agreed that while it's tempting to diagnose a lack of finance as the biggest constraint for programs, the real bottleneck is capacity.

"It's a little counterintuitive," he said. "You would think that at the very top of operating programs you'd say 'money, money, money.' But once you're in a program, your challenge is much more around implementation. It's always a temptation to think that, 'well, if we only had money,' but there are major challenges in implementing large, landscape-scale investment."

Steve Zwick is Ecosystem Marketplace's Managing Editor. He can be reached at szwick@ecosystemmarketplace.com. Will Tucker is Senior Communications Associate at Ecosystem Marketplace's publisher Forest Trends. He can be reached at wtucker@forest-trends.org. 

Sean Talks Money: What the Fed Rate Hike Means for Savers, Borrowers

By Sean McQuay

I

f you're a saver, congratulations. Your money may soon be more valuable. If you're indebted, I'm sorry to say that your debt is only getting more expensive.

Either way, the Federal Reserve's decision to boost interest rates by 25 basis points, a 0.25-percentage-point increase, will likely affect you soon. The Fed's decision affects the prime rate, which is generally the best lending rate offered by banks.

Banks are expected to increase the prime rate from 3.5% to 3.75% in the coming weeks. In turn, the annual percentage yields on your savings and the annual percentage rates on your outstanding credit card balances and future transactions can be expected to rise. In fact, your credit card APR will probably see a 0.25-percentage-point increase in the next couple of months. Your issuer might not even tell you the change is coming: Under the Credit Card Act of 2009, issuers don't have to notify you when your card's rate rises with the prime rate. But it can sure cost you.

How credit card interest works

The rate hike affects your credit cards because their rates are variable, not fixed. But the effect is a little different from other types of credit card APR increases.

If your issuer raised rates to make more money, for example, the Card Act would prevent the issuer from applying those higher rates to your existing balances; the new rates would apply only to transactions made after the increase. But when the prime rate rises, the Card Act allows issuers to raise the rates on your outstanding balances in addition to your new transactions.

Consider the average credit card APR of 18.76%, and that the average indebted household pays a total of $1,292 in credit card interest per year. If you add a Fed rate increase of 0.25 percentage point to that average APR, the interest total rises to $1,309 per year.

Spending $17 more on interest per year may not sound like a big deal. But when you consider that more rate hikes are expected as the economy improves, it's easy to see how this could slowly add up. The sooner you pay down your debt, or transfer it to a card with a lower rate, the better.

The golden goose for dealing with debt: 0% APR

If you want to avoid those increased interest rates, I recommend moving your debt to a card with a 0% APR promotion. The prime rate increase affects just about every credit card's ongoing interest rate, but those 0% promotions are relatively immune to changes like these.

Though issuers could bump up introductory interest rates on 0% APR offers, they probably won't. Credit card issuers have continued to offer these promotions since last year's rate hike, which was the first increase in nine years, and they offered them before 2006, when interest rates were much higher. Given the fierce competition among issuers, this probably won't change. For consumers tackling credit card debt, this means you can still pay down your debt interest-free, after moving your balance to another card.

There's a catch: Not everyone can qualify for a 0% APR offer. Generally, you need good or excellent credit. But if you're able to get one of these cards, you can potentially save a lot of money by transferring your balances -- or even just part of a large balance. After the promotional period ends, your interest rates will go up, so it's a good idea to pay down your debt during the 0% period, if you're able.

» MORE: NerdWallet's best balance transfer and 0% APR credit cards

Chase the upside: Boost your savings

If you're debt-free, congratulations. Now you have more incentive to save your money for the future. Fed rate changes don't guarantee a point-for-point improvement in your APYs, but they can encourage banks to give more back to their consumers.

If there's an increase to savings rates, it will be small -- but any improvement is welcome. The best savings accounts on the market are offering around 1% APY, a far cry from the 5% offered in the early 2000s. Consider this a good opportunity to make the switch to a higher-yield savings account, to ensure your savings grow as much as possible over time.

And if your savings account resembles a mattress, piggy bank or sock drawer, now's a great time to open a proper account. Cash stashed around your house only loses value over time, thanks to inflation, and interest yields at banks help lessen that loss. Opening a bank account may also save you a ton of money in fees: The average annual cost of being unbanked can be as high as $497.33, according to a recent NerdWallet study. Boost your savings by cutting those losses, and take advantage of the potential for rising interest yields.

Nerd tip: If you've had problems with ChexSystems in the past, now is a good time to start fresh. See whether your local bank or credit union offers a "second-chance" program.

» MORE: NerdWallet's best savings accounts

A sign of better economic times?

These rate increases, as confusing as they are, can ultimately be a good thing for your pocketbook. The near-zero interest rates we saw between 2008 and 2015 were meant to help the economy bounce back from the financial crisis. Keeping these rates low for too long could ultimately lead to inflation, which could hurt everyone's bottom line -- and it's these low rates that have kept your savings from growing more quickly.

So take a step back. If you're on top of your credit card debt, try saving a little extra. It'll go further. If not, remember that you don't have to start paying more in credit card interest just because the rates go up. Move your debt to a 0% balance transfer APR card, and put the money you might have otherwise spent on interest toward your debt. You'll end up paying less interest on your debt, not more.

Photo courtesy of NerdWallet.

Sean McQuay is a credit and banking expert at NerdWallet. A former strategist with Visa, McQuay now helps consumers use their credit cards and banking products more effectively. If you have a question, shoot him an email at asksean@nerdwallet.com. The answer might show up in a future column.

Self-Driving Uber Blows Through Red Light On First Day In San Francisco

Either driverless cars replicate humans a bit too well or they need more tweaking before they’re ready for prime time.

Just hours after Uber proudly rolled out a fleet of sleek self-driving Volvos in San Francisco on Wednesday morning, one of them barreled through a red light. Now California officials have called a halt to the pilot.

All of Uber’s self-driving cars in both San Francisco and Pittsburgh, the first city to see Uber’s autonomous tech, do have an engineer at the wheel, so this could technically be classified as human error. 

Notably, the car’s brake lights were on as it entered the intersection, indicating perhaps someone aboard the vehicle attempted to stop but did so too late.

Somewhat ironically, the incident was captured by a dash cam mounted aboard a taxi in the next lane, aka the thing Uber’s technology aims to one day replace. 

An operations manager at Luxor Cab, which operates the taxi in the video, confirmed its authenticity to the San Francisco Examiner, which first obtained the video.

Demanding that it first obtain a permit for operating the autonomous vehicle, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles ordered Uber to halt testing its self-driving cars on public streets in a letter sent to the company Wednesday.

“It is illegal for the company to operate its self-driving vehicles on public roads until it receives on autonomous vehicle testing permit,” the letter from state officials said. “If Uber does not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and seek a testing permit, DMV will initiate legal action.”

Uber had hailed the novelty for its customers Wednesday: “Starting today, riders who request an uberX in San Francisco will be matched with a Self-Driving Uber if one is available. Expanding our self-driving pilot allows us to continue to improve our technology through real-world operations.”

In a statement to The Huffington Post, Uber said the incident was a human mistake, not a technical one.

“This incident was due to human error,” the spokesperson said. “This is why we believe so much in making the roads safer by building self-driving Ubers. This vehicle was ... not carrying customers. The driver involved has been suspended while we continue to investigate.”