Uber ruled illegal in Taiwan
international.thenewslens.com
international.thenewslens.com
>There are also cases in which legal loopholes have allowed the company to continue its operations. For example, Uber plans to purchase commercial licenses for its drivers in Germany, where ride-sharing services are banned from operating without taxi licenses.
It's similar in the country I'm currently in - Uber works as a Taxi service and Uber drivers have Taxi licenses. Altho I would not call this a "loophole" as this is the route Uber should have taken from the get go in those places where they don't allow those without Taxi licenses to operate Taxi services.
The problem is their morals when it comes to how they treat their drivers.
Does Uber check that their drivers have such insurance?
Also the US insurance (and legal) system is a very unique one which other countries don't actually have. So not sure what you are worried about from that perspective.
Outside the US drivers are responsible for their own insurance.
How do you know the Uber you get into has suitable insurance? Any commercial passenger carrying driver needs more insurance than a normal car driver.
Perhaps I'm missing something as a non-US citizen.
In, for example, England the insurance is part of the regulatory burden. I know that a taxi in England has valid insurance. I don't know if an English Uber car has valid insurance.
Uber avoids the regulation, and under-insured cars is one risk of that.
> What difference could it make to you?
The car crashes and you lose a hand. This puts you out of work for a few months; makes it much harder for you to get new jobs; reduces your productivity. You'll need some modifications to your home. You'll need money. A properly insured car makes it easier to get that money.
I think Uber should want to obey laws in the territories that it is trying to operate in. To not do so is just picking the wrong kind of fight.
England has public health care, but you're going to want a better prosthetic and you're going to want money to make adaptations to your home over what will be available. And you're going to want money to cover your reduced income while you're off work.
The issue is they also must have insurance that covers them for business use when they are using their car for business. Every personal insurance policy I've read says it isn't in effect when the car is being used for business purposes. If I tried to file a claim under my personal automobile policy it would go something like this
"...and you were driving for Uber at the time? Yeah...lol."
It looks more like you are clinging to some edge case potential for something thats most likely not going to happen in any meaningful way.
Again. Europe is very different than the US in that regard.
(Example off the cuff, was on tv a while ago: girl gets ankle damaged in accident at car show. Yes the foot gets the plaster 'for free', but here are some other costs that aren't covered by national insurance: travel costs, time off for parents, adaptation to the house to accommodate reduced mobility, wheelchair-accessible car, ...) Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I know of no social healthcare system that covers such costs).
The only reason I mention the US is because Uber takes care of the insurance for Uber drivers in the US, but they don't do that anywhere else. Everywhere else the drivers are expected to buy the insurance. In some places you know that Uber are regulated as part of the taxi system and so you know the drivers will have bought insurance as part of that regulation. But that's not everywhere.
Properly insured cars are really important, even when you live in an area with public health care and welfare systems. There are many costs involved in severe injury that are only minimally covered by public welfare.
This is not a super rare event! About 1,700 people die each year in road traffic accidents in Great Britain. (And that's the lowest it's been since records began). Very many more are severely injured.
In England you'll get minimal help from public welfare systems - you'll get a prosthetic limb but you'll want a better one, and that will cost. You'll want to make adaptations to your home - you'll get some help, but you'll want more and better adaptations. Depending how you're employed you'll get some statutory sick pay or disability benefit, but these are likely to be much less than you were earning. (Statutory sick pay is £88.25 per week for 28 weeks.)
My original point was that Uber because of it's use of technology have solved the problems that would normally require licenses. I.e. it's as safe to drive as any other service.
Insurance is a minor problem which 1) can easily be fixed, 2) isn't really a problem with the uber model.
Does public healthcare help you if you need to install a wheelchair ramp in your home? Or other lifestyle modifications that are a result of injury? Such as increased costs of transportation? Lost wages?
In England I have no way of knowing whether my Uber has valid insurance for carrying passengers.
It's not a problem of legislation but a problem with Uber.
The normal insurance a car driver has does not cover them if they take paying passengers.
I don't see the issue. Most european countries have insurance either via the wellfare state or through legislation or insurances. What do the passenger care about drivers insurance for? If anything Uber is not going to leave just an inch of potential room for critique so of course they are insured as you need to be just in order to own a car.
In the US Uber buys this extra insurance for all their drivers. Outside the US Uber does not buy this extra insurance. It tells drivers that they have to buy their own extra insurance. Remember, this is extra insurance on top of the regular insurance that all car drivers must have.
In some countries Uber drivers are regulated just as normal minicabs, and the regulators will check that the uber driver has this extra insurance. But in some other countries Uber is aggressively resisting that regulation, and there are concerns that the cars are not properly insured.
Imagine if you lost an arm tomorrow, or had a brain injury. You may get all your hospital treatment for free. You may get all the prosthetic limbs for free. You might get some paid leave from work. But even so, you are going to be left with large costs. Those costs are covered by insurance. But if you were a paying passenger in a car, and the car driver did not have the extra insurance, you would not be covered by their insurance. You would not get the money you need. You could try to sue the driver, but if the driver is poor you're unlikely to get the money.
Think about this.. In a normal taxi, how do you know the driver has insurance? Perhaps it has expired. It's no different than any other kind of business. Relying upon someone else to be insured is just foolish.
Regardless, the way insurers generally work is that they will try to recover the cost of damage for the responsible party. So, for example, if you have homeowner's insurance and somebody drives into your house, your insurer will pay you and then try to recover the costs from the the driver's insurance company.
I do not need to fear that nobody is going to pay my healthcare after an accident. However, that is paid by the public at large instead of the one responsible (so Uber shifts liability away from them to society). Additionally, nobody is going to reimburse my other damages, such as loss of earnings if the driver can't pay.
This is shifting the burden to society, in the name of unnecessary high premiums for those who insured themselves.
Again sure you can blow it up to be a big problem but it's easily fixable and doesn't in itself take anything away from the original point which started this weird insurance thread.
Even if you picked up a hitchhiker and they gave you $20 for your troubles that hitchhiker is not your customer and you don't regularly drive around looking for hitchhikers to make a profit.
It's actually pretty straightforward. That's why the term "sharing economy" is so disingenuous; nothing but doublespeak.
I couldn't find a price quote, but I imagine it's not cheap.
Your current policy holder is not required to offer this special insurance. They can cancel you if they feel you are driving for Uber without telling them.
No beefs with Uber, other than stop fooling with vechicle requirements, and fees. You're hiring independent contractors?
Oh yea, whatever you do don't go into debt over Uber. Buying a new Prius to work for this company seems rediculious.
In Germany people who want to transport others for profit need a special drivers license. Say bus drivers, taxi drivers, chauffeurs, etc.
If Uber drivers are willing to get this license, they can operate completely legally.
You can make the "Personenbeförderugsschein" which allows to do "shuttle services" but compared to taxis they can't randomly pick up passengers but I.e. have to return to their base before picking up the next passenger, no waiting at a "strategically" good position etc.
And a Personenbeförderungsschein is the only thing you need for that.
In some cities even the only differences between a hired service like Uber or a Taxi is that Uber may NOT use Taxi-only spaces, and may only pick up people who have arranged the journey before pickup.
Which is exactly what uber wants.
Secondly, under current regulations unless you are a taxi you need to return to a designated premise after every trip. Every chauffeur needs to do that as well.
There is already a meaningful distinction in the law. The second restriction might be a bit harsh, but often Uber isn't even abiding by the first which is a pretty basic requirement.
Scheinselbstständigkeit is what Uber is doing, and it means Uber is responsible for the insurance.
Exposing itself to "license" means exposing themselves to arbitrary government control and has nothing to do with being responsible. On the contrary focusing on making good profits is the best way to help both drivers and passengers without compromising interests of both.
You know, "arbitrary" things like insurance, anti-discrimination provisions, etc.
I'll bite. What's immoral about how they treat their drivers? Their drivers choose their hours, choose which rides to take, and can work for as many uber-like services at the same time as they want.
You hire people as self-employed but rip them of the opportunity to work as self-employed by.
1) Not allowing them to set their own fees 2) Not allowing them to hire people to drive for them 3) Discouraging tips 4) Deciding what types of cars they can drive in.
All things you would normally do to people who where hired because they would trade that potential upside of being selv-employed by for instance having access to ex. healthcare and vacation.
In other words. Uber takes away all the good things about being self-employed and replace them with restrictions that would normally only apply for someone who was employed. While at the same time not giving them access to those things that are actually advantageous about being employed.
Uber isn't a technology disrupter it's a legislation disrupter.
Is Uber responsible for the generally poor opportunities in the economy? Does their offering of these positions disrupt a solution to some public goods problem? (A good heuristic for whether one should care about a kind of lawbreaking, btw.)
No one forces self-employed independent contractor tradesmen to become self-employed independent contractor tradesmen, and yet when one comes to your house to fix your plumbing or electrical work-there are still requisites under the law that they're entitled to.
The opposite position is like saying, "you are the rightful owner of that apple, therefore you can't trade it for something better even if you want to, because that would be abusive of your rights".
The Uber driver have absolutely no way of building a business or expanding it. No way of making more money. No way of hiring people. No control over which car to use and so on.
This is not the conditions someone who is self-employed work under.
Edit: I'm not trying to be snarky; it's just that this issue comes up a lot, and I always look for such an explanation and yet never get it. Hence why someone came up with the "Copenhagen interpretation of ethics" argument. If you could actually fill this gap in my understanding, I would gladly help spread the insight to those like me who don't see consistent internal logic behind it.
Someone who knows the risks (physical, emotional, mental what have you and furthermore etcetera) of a job shouldn't be afforded certain protections from the government to minimize those risks, if they take a job that opens them up to the possibility of said risks?
They have strictly as much or more opportunity to do all of these things than if Uber didn't exist. Driving for Uber doesn't stop you from doing other drive-for-hire work. And because Uber exists, they can at least make some money when they aren't getting any customers of their own.
will strictly true it's also completely ignoring the reality that we people have needs that forces us to make choices, often choices we don't want to make but have few other choices.
It does address the parents point because if you don't see that I am not sure anything I say will change that.
If you could articulate the collective action problem that such a ban would resolve, that would improve my worldmodel to the point of seeing what insight you're offering here and possibly agreeing. If you can't, then maybe your position doesn't correspond to a better worldmodel than one that I and the original parent hold.
Also, it's not so much that "no one" forces them to work, but that Uber doesn't. My need for satiation "forces" me to buy food, but I hope that doesn't, in your mind, justify a crackdown on all food sellers.
http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/blog/ubers-deleted-rides-of-gl...
I.e. the claims that because uber isn't doing things by the book it's somehow less safe than using regulated taxi's.
This is obviously false since the logging of the drivers and the passengers probably make it one of the most transparent safety protocols out there.
Most studies show that some of the biggest detergents against crimes is the risk of being detected.
So in other words. Uber is as safe for the passgener, if not safer, than any other taxi company out there.
Therefore the question is: How easy is it to track the offender, in both the services?
I am from Brazil, and I am very happy for Uber going the illegal way, because the illegal way, is the actually moral way.
Here in Brazil we have the "Taxi Mafia", to become a licensed Taxi, you need to at least bribe people, if you get too involved in the Taxi system, you will end interacting with a real Mafia, of the sort that assassinate people, steal millions (or billions) of public money, and send people to sleep with fishes.
Uber is our ray of hope against the Mafia, and the Mafia is fighting back hard (physically assaulting Uber drivers and cars, and doing all sorts of manuevering to ban Uber explicitly to allow the police to arrest Uber drivers).
EDIT: Just something concrete.
There are many, many videos of this stuff, but I could not find the most interesting ones, youtube search is not cooperative today (I keep finding stuff related to some videogames instead)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHY_rITP09E
This video is in portuguese, but is basically about the reporters tricking one guy into thinking they are real taxi driver pretenders, and the guy offers (illegally) to give them a legal taxi license for what was then about 50.000 USD.
when UBER was banned in São Paulo, I watched the discussion in the council, one councilwoman showed a video, also made by reporters, where the Mafia was charging 100.000 USD for a license + car + bribes paid
This is another video, unfortunately part of it is seemly missing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcfOMVAoG6Q
Stuff in this video (2010): Rio de Janeiro city has only 32000 taxi licenses, but has 6 million inhabitants (plus all the people that go there to work, and tourists).
One guy offered in the newspaper classifieds, to sell his taxi for 70.000 USD, his car is worth 15.000 USD, to is quite obvious what the rest of the money is for.
There are competing Taxi mafias, in one part of the video, a group of taxi drivers from one mafia, beat up a driver from another mafia. (ie: the "foreign" driver stopped to deliver a passenger at the airport, and a person that was waiting approached him, triggering the attack, since he was "stealing" passengers from the competing group territory).
Nearer the end of the video, the reporters ask in front of a shopping mall, how to join their group, they state that one of their members want to leave and is selling his place, that the reporter can buy it, the reporter attempt to see if the money will go to the police, and asks if it will pay bribes, they reply that not in that case, that in the shopping mall the money was protection money, that those that are paying are under protection of a certain person, thus noone will mess with the paying people, those that don't pay risk getting their cabs attacked, ranging from their tires being popped to worse stuff.
But it's still not argument why countries which fortunately aren't mafia-run shouldn't have regulation for Uber-like activities.
There is no doubt that Uber is have great effect in some countries. The question become whether it's replacing one evil with another.
Keep in mind that Ubers goal is to not have any drivers at all which is why they are actively investing in the development and research of self-driving cars.
Uber isn't hiding their own efforts on that front. Maybe they aren't blaring trumpets about it when they pay their human drivers, but we know where things are going.
Keep in mind Ubers success is the market it addresses (personal transportation) is huge and do not require any interest in technology to be either using or working for.
The driverless cars aren't evil but the fact that Uber is using some of those money they make on the current drivers to ultimately replace them I would claim is a form of "evil"
Especially given the circumstances they work under.
If Uber had done what you think they should have, then they would have never taken off. The difference between an cab and an uber is not yellow paint and a taxi light, or even a harder driving test. It's the absurd regulations around taxis that turned them into a government-sponsored cartel.
Honestly, the same is true in NYC. I rarely call an uber because it's just easier to get one of the hundreds of yellow cabs than it is to stand on the street like an idiot looking for the Toyota Prius with the right license plate.
Since uber arrived, all the issues I had with cabs seem to have disappeared. The fares are lower, drivers accept credit cards, and don't talk on their cellphone to their buddy in India. Uber put the pressure on cabs and it worked. I see no need to use uber.
I think it's somewhat understandable given it's a long way out of Taipei City and there's no guarantee of being able to find a return fare.
If there is no guarantee of a fare back, this kind of pricing is not sustainable long-term.
It was still dirt-cheap compared to a equivalent trip in the US.
... and all of a sudden, you are back to taxi pricing.
Uber was an enormous improvement in SF and in Beijing (where there just aren't enough cabs). In Taiwan it's a sizable step backwards.
So it's not unreasonable that taxi drivers charge a special rate. It's a lot of extra hassle.
But I'm surprised Uber actually took you there.
Do they technically serve the whole of Greater Taipei?
"The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for."
It's not something you can do once, and that's it.
Given the anti competitive practices of Uber in the US, I wouldn't trust anything these guys say. "Start ups" always say that before becoming the monopoly.
1. http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-play...
Edit: Formatting
A lot of them don't speak english though. I don't know if there are special english-speaking taxis you can call up like I've seen in other countries. Personally I've never needed it.
But the friends who do, mostly see it as a luxury service.
Especially when they want to send a home safely after a night out "take an Uber" they'll say.
It's the premium feel, vs a chatty taxi driver asking you about how much rent you pay.
I'd say it's because to a Mandarin speaker A.P.P is easier to pronounce than 'app' (Mandarin doesn't have any syllables that end with a p sound, but it does have syllables that start with p).
There's also a history of 3 letter acronyms imported from English, such as DVD, VCD, MP3 which are all pronounced letter by letter and even though APP is not an acronym, to a native speaker it fits a similar pattern.
For your example, people end up pronounce A.P.P because not everyone knows that app comes from `application` and therefore you might run into conversations with people speaking with different pronunciations. Some people pronounce 'app' the normal way, and some people pronounce 'app' similar to (ape).
After awhile, people would explain what they're trying to say by spelling out, and eventually you'd learn to just say A.P.P instead of attempting to incorrectly pronounce the word.
Same thing goes with Facebook, which is referred as F.B, and Instagram, which is usually referred as I.G
We operate in 5 countries in Asia offering van hire and delivery services.
But in Taiwan we've had regulatory issues, so we only operate a scooter delivery service.
Its a similar issue to Uber. We'd need to have a license and a minimum size fleet of vehicles to do it.
But, even if our app and website works perfectly in english, there's little chance the driver will speak english.
In Hong Kong we have a "speaks english" service you can pay for.
Also, do you have different apps for the different markets?
If it's the same app everywhere, then it would make sense that the people can bring the "service" with them e.g. going from Taiwan to HK on a business trip, or Singapore for a few months work stint (or any other direction), and they can still use it the same way.
It drives me crazy to no end when there's an international company, and language is completely tied to the location. Your case make a bit more sense than others, and it's a ton of work, I know. Just some thoughts.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be more friendly.
We have one app with a whole host of different options baked into it for each country.
* different graphics
* different mapping SDKs
* different languages
* different vehicle types and service options
I should give a technical talk in Taipei one day on it.
I used to live in Taipei, but moved full-time back to HK in September.
Not in Karnataka, India - I and everyone uses it everyday.
I have a hard time understanding how regulating personal transit is a governmental matter. A taxi driver may overcharge me a significant amount, and then there are instances of physical confrontation, but these are both rare and a risk that is inherent in accepting a ride with another person. It seems to me that the benefit to society (less pollution, traffic, easier commute, automotive scrap waste, etc) outweighs these risks.
All of these things are things that people had huge problems with convincing taxi companies to actually solve - after all, it's more profitable not to - and eventually local Governments agreed that taxis are as important to a city's transport infrastructure as anything else and should be held to a certain standard. You can only realistically argue against that if you believe that everyone who was using taxis had an alternative, which isn't the case.
Uber solves many of these issues, I must admit - but what about five years down the line, once they have the near-monopoly they're seeking? Can we be absolutely certain it will continue to do what's best for the cities it services, even when it affects Uber's bottom line?
They will probably not get anywhere near a monopoly. Their businessmodel is flawed: anyone can start a similar service. In fact, many similar services already exist in Europe.
The network lock-in is quite real - if you can't get a critical mass of cars on the road, you can't get customers, and you can't get a critical mass of cars on the road without having customers paying fares.
What can really hurt Uber is unionization of their drivers - since nothing stops them from collectively switching to a competing service.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/3/9841562/french-uber-driver...
Remember that one of the common user groups of taxis are "people who are drunk". These are vulnerable people who are less able to make sensible decisions, so the regulation needs to be a bit tighter.
That vulnerability means you don't want people with a history of sexual violence to be cab drivers.
There are other risks to passengers. You want to make sure all drivers have adequate insurance. We know that people are not capable of assessing that risk. You want to make sure that cabs are safe vehicles. For some cabs you want to make sure that they're capable of carrying disabled passengers (eg, people with guide dogs, or people with wheelchairs) so you specify that bigger companies include adapted cars.
The regulation exists for the same reason the HIPAA regulation exists: because there used to be so much abuse in cab companies.
Whether the current regulation makes much sense is another question - I don't think you'd end up with the current US style regulation if you tried to design a system from scratch.
All car owners have to deal with insurance, in case they get into an accident. Public transport needs a different kind of insurance. Regulation here ensures compliance.
Licensed cab drivers are also trained in terms of being able to provide First Aid and whatnot. Uber does away with this. (https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/3de8xr/ama_someone...)
Cab fleets, by virtue of being composed of multiple cabs, are able to comply with regulations regarding having a certain % of cabs and drivers prepared to handle disabled passengers. Uber, seeing as they exist in a weird limbo where they both represent all the cabs and none at the same time, has fought such restrictions (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/21/uber-disabi...).
There was no First Aid training involved as far as he told me, only a knowledge test of about 100 Points of Interest around the city, including routes to there and in some cases opening hours.
My understanding of the history is that, around the time of the great depression, there was significant oversupply of taxis with fare wars and various unsavory tactics, including violence, for hustling business. From there, regulation grew over time helped along by the incumbents who benefited from it of course.
"Rioting Cabmen Smash Autos, Crack Heads, As They March On Hall"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIE3vc-RvOc
http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cornell?a=d&d=CDS19...
"the strikers, marching to the City Hall to-day to protest to the Mayor, stormed through the Lower Broadway, destroyed 30 cabs and assaulted 25 chauffeurs, leaving the men for the most part stripped of clothing lying in a bloody and dazed state in the streets. They then staged a final riot within sight of Laguardia's chambers, dragging men and women passengers from the taxis and beating the drivers unconscious."
"I don't know why we need HIPAA because it's pretty rare for insurance to divulge health information."
Of course you don't see insurance companies doing stuff like that anymore because of HIPAA.
Ripping off the foreigner is more of a mainland China thing.
Anyway, since I'm not going to provide proof, you don't have to believe me.
Get rekt, Taiwanese sympathizer.
Taxi service is already good if you speak Chinese. You can call a taxi automated system, give them a street corner, and they will give you a time estimate. It is usually 3 minutes and they show up on time.
The benefit uber provides is to foreigners. If you do not speak Chinese, then you previously needed to flag down a cab.
On the last point, a 45-minute cab ride from eastern Taipei to the international airport cost NT$1200, or about $36, and if you call a private limo service by phone it's NT$1000 for a big van, probably less for a car. By comparison, rates from Boston' airport are about $60 for a 30 minute ride and $40 for an Uber.
FWIW, I found Uber cars to be somewhat rare in Taipei and nonexistent in Chiayi, a smaller city in the south that I visited earlier this month. That could be the crackdown mentioned in the article, but I suspect the demand isn't sufficient owing to the factors mentioned earlier.
> According to the Highway Act, Uber has been fined NT$100,000 (approximately US$3,070) to NT$150,000 (approximately US$4,605). Uber drivers have been fined NT$50,000 (approximately US$1,535).