They were more worried about being associated with the accident than the accident itself. Lots of weasel words and excuses in trying to claim that the driver didn't work for them, or that the driver wasn't active or doing a trip.
If I worked for Uber, I would have posted something simple and left it at that e.g.
"We have been informed by law enforcement that there has been a traffic accident in San Francisco involving an Uber driver. We send our deepest condolences to the family and victims of this tragic accident."
Just to play devil's advocate, would you apply the same standard to Musk's handling of the Tesla fires? His primary concern there seemed to be to disavow responsibility and blame the driver. While it's true that the fires were driver error, that doesn't change how combative he is about criticism (see: top gear).
As I said in another comment, that even assumes they were capable of knowing the driver was working for them. In their blog post they asked police to release details of the driver, with a statement saying that any driver involved in a serious law enforcement issue would be deactivated (i.e. fired). Then in the update, they confirmed that the driver (whose details were presumably released at that point) did work for them and was in fact deactivated as a result.
To my reading, it sounds like they simply had no way of knowing that the driver worked for them without the police giving them details on the driver.
They were more worried about being associated with the accident than the accident itself. Lots of weasel words and excuses in trying to claim that the driver didn't work for them, or that the driver wasn't active or doing a trip.
If I worked for Uber, I would have posted something simple and left it at that e.g.
"We have been informed by law enforcement that there has been a traffic accident in San Francisco involving an Uber driver. We send our deepest condolences to the family and victims of this tragic accident."
The end.