All things considered, this actually came on pretty quickly. Even in San Francisco, Uber and other ride sharing services have only been main-stream since, what, 2011? And threateningly so for less time than that.
Doesn't this say something about yellow cab's business model?
One of these articles said that s.f. Yellow Cab was self-insured for a while, and during that period one of their drivers got in an accident. The passenger sued yellow cab and won an $8 million dollar judgement.