Two individuals rented cars from Turo, a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform, and used them to perform acts of violence earlier this week.
First, a military veteran driving a Ford F-150 Lightning drove 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 by suicide.
On Friday, Turo’s chief executive, Andre Haddad, said in a statement that he is “outraged” thinking about “how egregiously the two individuals who perpetrated these heinous crimes abused our platform.” He noted that Turo is working “around the clock” to figure out how the platform could have been misused like this.
And there’s the rub. How could Turo or any similar platform have prevented this?
Turo has been described as like Airbnb for cars, a platform where vehicle owners can rent out their cars for extra money or even as a full-time business; many of Turo’s hosts rent out three or more vehicles on the platform at a time.
Turo says it screens each renter through a “proprietary multi-layer, data-science-based trust and safety algorithm” called the Turo Risk Score, and that the company uses 50 internal and external data sources to build, maintain, and improve on that score. It’s not clear what that means — does Turo perform normal criminal background checks? — and Turo has not responded to TechCrunch’s request for clarification.
Over the years, some bad actors have managed to slip through the cracks, embroiling Turo in controversy after cars on its platform have been found to be used for human and drug trafficking. And people who claim to be hosts regularly post on the Turo subreddit page about their cars being rented out to people with criminal histories.
But even if Turo’s background checks were foolproof, the two perpetrators of the crimes that happened this week in New Orleans and Las Vegas had valid driver’s licenses, clean criminal backgrounds, and were decorated U.S. military servicemembers, according to Haddad.
“They could have boarded any plane, checked into any hotel, or rented a car or truck from any traditional vehicle rental 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 fewer than 0.10% have ended with a serious incident like a vehicle theft.
So what’s next for Turo after this? Haddad noted that aside from investing in improving its risk score algorithm, it has also assembled a team of former law enforcement professionals to help assess future risk.
“We’re consulting with national security and counterterrorism experts to learn more about how we can get even better and play our part in helping prevent anything like this from happening ever again,” Haddad said.
