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Comment by vegashacker | Hacker News Reader

And you don't have to explain the driver where you want to go. Other than being an extremely nice feature, I could see that decreasing lane blockage time as well.

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The only time I ever had to explain to a taxi driver where to go was in an Uber, where the road was closed and google maps had no idea about it, and the driver clearly didn't know the local roads well enough to just pick a different one.

So true. The last few taxi rides I took all involved the driver asking how to get to the destination. Not which way was faster, but how to get there. They used gps as a callback.

So weird. Granted, my 3 taxi rides aren't statisticly significant, but it one of several factors that makes uber/lyft more comfortable.

Also nice for the driver wanting to retire for the day that he can get fares that get him closer to his home.

Is that a feature Uber/Lyft drivers have? I always thought they could not see the destination before picking up the client.

I recently talked with a Uber driver, they cannot see the destination of the client, but he said he can specify the rough area where he wants to (eventually?) go and fares will take him close enough to that direction.

Yep, its fairly recent though.

Concurring with sibling comments, last week I had a Lyft driver who was using that feature because she was ending her shift.

Every taxi I've ridden in probably 10 past years had a GPS, that's not Uber/Lyft invention or unique property.

GP was talking about the initial setup of a ride, the app of your uber/lyft driver will already have your destination. The conventional taxi GPS won't. The app backend takes care of the cumbersome rider to driver to GPS dataflow.

Still, as a cyclist, I'd rather have lane blocking than drivers fiddling with their apps while driving.

"the app of your uber/lyft driver will already have your destination."

So does modern taxis. It's strange that when topic comes to taxis vs Uber/Lyft here, it looks like taxis in US are very archaic. I live in Europe and taxis started using apps/GPS/SMS/time and price approximation etc. long before Uber, is it so different in other parts of the world?

I think it existed but just wasn't very good. The tipping culture and cabbie nagging here also kind of defeats most of the value from those estimates.

Which country in Europe had a taxi app before Uber?

My (US) last taxi ride was 3 years ago and it had GPS the driver didn't want to use and no price estimation. The big deal was that it now had a device where I could slide my card instead of the driver doing so.

4 years ago was the last time I called for a taxi. Took 20 minutes to get it (lyft takes 3 min in the same time of day), and the first taxi company didn't service my area (but did cover the opposite side of the street I later discovered).

So yeah, archaic.

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