Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

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> ... the driver already had a taxi license. What was the point?

The article came to a pretty clear and definite conclusion, did you read to the end? The point made is that she realized the company bore no responsibility and no damage in her accident, and these companies need to bear some of the responsibility and some of the liability for the system they’re creating. She realized the driver isn’t wholly responsible and the driver suffered some pretty big consequences himself.

“Me: left vertebral artery. Driver: livelihood + S$3,700 in fines and expenses. Grab: S$20, the refund they’d given me after the accident.”

“I’m also more aware of the profound compromises we’ve made in giving tech companies, even those with well-intentioned CEOs, so much power over our daily lives. Tan showed me kindness in the months that followed my accident. But we deserve more than expressions of remorse from companies such as Grab. Detailed safety records would be a good place to start.”

Would it be different with a taxi company?

Would a taxi customer be able to obtain anything from a taxi company beside the money paid out by the insurance? Does it matter who pays for the insurance, company vs driver? Aren't a lot of taxi driver insured themselves?

I don't see technology to call the ride (an apps vs phone), or work arrangement (cab might be an employee or a contractor to a large company vs an "independent worker" makes a difference. Would a taxi company bear more responsibilities? How?

Perhaps it would not be different. But maybe this whole time it should have been different, and the centralization provided by ride share apps like Grab now make it feasible for it to be different.

So I don’t buy this argument, and I think it’s a dangerous one. The hyperbolic, oblivious version of what you’re saying is: “well, when there were many taxi companies, it was a Wild West with no tracking and little accountability, why should that change now that the tech lets you call a cab from a phone?”

The technology we use to hail cabs provides new business opportunities, and those are actively being pursued. But also the centralization of these operations also provides new regulatory opportunities — perhaps we should be taking advantage of those too!

The author talks about compromises we made in accepting technology. I'm pretty sure she doesn't argue it should have been different.

Now, let's address your question, should it be different? Sure, but not taxi vs people driving. All drivers should be targeted, not just professional drivers. This is not like airliners vs general aviation, because those two very rarely share paths and runway, while we all share the same roads. If I die as a taxi passenger because the other driver made a mistake, I'll still be dead.

Also, deaths on the road in the western world has been drastically declining because of campaign and laws against drunk driving, enforcement of speed limits, better engineering of roads and car safety. What are you proposing here for technology to increase road safety when you are saying maybe it should be different?

People driving taxis and Ubers certainly do have reason to be vetted at a higher standard than regular drivers, since for the most part they're spending much more time driving than anyone else; this leads to a much higher risk-per-driver if one is unsafe.

This is comparable to how there are special licensing requirements, above and beyond the typical driver's license, in order to drive a truck or a bus (and, IIRC, even higher requirements to drive a schoolbus.)

I didn’t get the sense that the article was about taxi vs ride sharing, I don’t think her point depends on ride sharing being worse than taxis. They should both bear some responsibility, in my interpretation of the article.

> Would a taxi company bear more responsibilities? How?

I don’t know about Singpore, but I think the answer in many cities is yes to some degree, and the reason is that taxi companies are more established and have more regulatory oversight today. In some places the taxi company owns the car, and licenses the car and the driver, where ride sharing apps benefit from hiring people who use their own car. That is, after all, the main reason why ride share apps are currently under-cutting taxis.

I haven't been to singapore for a copule of years, but I didn't notice Uber undercutting taxis, it was just easier to get them (especially out of the city centre), and easier to expense, with a single bill at the end of the month.

Likewise in the UK, all uber drivers are licensed private hire drivers, same as Sal's taxis. It's just that they tend to be far better. The only illegality I've seen is potentially breaking the regulations I've heard exist to prevent a taxi based in stoke and thus licensed under Staffs driving me from Crewe (Cheshire) to Knutsford (Cheshire). Far better than the unlicense minicabs that used to be so common in cities on a friday night.

Isn't it about taxi vs ride sharing? The author wrote:

"I’m also more aware of the profound compromises we’ve made in giving tech companies, even those with well-intentioned CEOs, so much power over our daily lives"

How do you interpret that?

Compromises over what if this isn't taxi vs ride share? What compromises have we made here?

“we’ve made in giving tech companies, even those with well-intentioned CEOs, so much power over our daily lives. ”

This line also stuck out to me when reading the article.

It seems as if the author thinks we had a choice to make Uber/Grab/etc so wildly successful and popular. I would argue instead that the current state of the ride-sharing industry is merely a natural progression due to technological advancement (smartphones, Internet, etc.) and strong economies - it’s not 1940 and we aren’t all building military planes and making bullets in factories, after all. People (human capital) are free to pursue rather wild and crazy ideas like auto-lacing shoes and blockchain WiFi-enables dog feeders, as well as quite useful things like transportation and self-driving cars.

People say my grandfather was a dreamer. They told me he would say things like “one day, we’ll have TVs that you hang on your wall, like a picture!”. Well, we’ve done that, and even some of the stuff from cartoons seems to be coming true.

Whoops, off-track a bit! So, back to my argument. Taxi cabs could have been the ones to develop apps and put them in the hands of millions of people. Not at the scale of Uber/et al. But they of course, did not, because the smartest people in tech aren’t going to work for Yellow Cab Company of (NY/Chicago/major city), and they wouldn’t have been able to change the habits and buying patterns of millions of people around the world. Ride-sharing works because you have people who need income providing you with their driving skill and their car, anywhere in the world, just to use your app. And it’s a losing $ situation for the drivers, but many of them are too desperate to see that.

We didn’t choose to give the big Tech players power over our lives. It just happened. Technology changed the way the world operates, and thus, it changed the way we experience life and interact with each other. If it weren’t Uber, it would be another startup with a silly name. Maybe Goober. Güber.

I would argue instead that the current state of the ride-sharing industry is merely a natural progression due to technological advancement (smartphones, Internet, etc.) and strong economies

Not to mention complacency by entrenched industries -- before the Uber days, San Francisco had a half dozen competing cab companies, you'd call for one cab (talking to a human dispatcher), he'd tell you a cab was on the way, then you'd wait and hope your cab showed up, meanwhile you might see several cars from other companies drive by... and as you wait, you consider whether to ditch the cab you called and flag down one of the others.

If they'd pooled their resources, come up with a central dispatch system for all companies and some sort of app that tells you when your cab is going to arrive (even an SMS saying "Driver XXX is .5 miles away and should be there in XX minutes" would let you know that there really is a driver on the way), I wonder if Uber would have taken over there.

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