Two individuals rented a car from Turo, a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform, and used it to commit violent acts earlier this week. First, a military veteran driving a Ford F-150 Lightning drove into a crowd, killing at least 15. Then, an active 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 as a result of passing out. On Friday, Turo’s chief executive, Andre Haddad, said in a statement that he was “outraged” at the thought of “how egregiously these two criminals abused our platform.” He noted that Turo is working “around the clock” to figure out how the platform could be abused like this. And there’s the rub. How can Turo or similar platforms prevent this? Turo has been described as Airbnb for cars, a platform where vehicle owners can rent cars for extra money or even as a full-time business; Many Turo hosts rent three or more vehicles on the platform at the same time. Turo says it screens each tenant through a “multi-layered, data science-based trust and security algorithm” called the Turo Risk Score, and the company uses 50 internal and external data sources to build, maintain and improve it. score. It’s not clear what that means – does Turo do a normal criminal background check? — and Turo has yet to respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification. Over the years, some bad actors have managed to slip through the cracks, making Turo the subject of controversy after cars on the platform were found to be used for human and drug trafficking. And people claiming to be hosts regularly post on Turo’s subreddit page about cars being rented to people with criminal histories. But even if Turo’s background check was stupid, the two perpetrators of the crimes that happened this week in New Orleans and Las Vegas have valid driver’s licenses, clean criminal background, and they were decorated US military servicemembers, according to Haddad. “They can get on any plane, check into any hotel, or rent a car or truck from a traditional vehicle rental chain,” Haddad said. “We don’t believe these two people would be flagged by anyone – including law enforcement.” Turo says it has facilitated 27 million trips over 12 years, and less than 0.10% have ended with serious incidents like vehicle theft. Then what will Turo do after this? Haddad noted that in addition to investing in improving the risk scoring algorithm, he is also assembling a team of former law enforcement professionals to help assess future risks. “We are consulting with national security and counterterrorism experts to learn more about how we can be better and play our role in helping to prevent something like this from happening again,” said Haddad.
