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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Here in Germany proper Taxis have to pick you up (as far as I know, I almost never need one). That's apparently the main reason they offer why they should be protected against services like Uber.

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Yes, here in Canada too. It just wasn't enforceable and taxi drivers regularly refused fares and kicked out passengers if they weren't lucrative enough.

https://globalnews.ca/news/3907475/taxi-driver-refuses-to-dr...

Medallion-taxis are comprehensively awful, and California seems determined to regress to where they're the only choice for riders again.

That’s the law in most places in the US, too. Uber was founded because it wasn’t really true in practice. You couldn't order a taxi in most places without giving your destination, and frequently they just wouldn't show.

Uber was, and remains, a huge improvement over the pre-Uber status quo.

For drivers or riders?

Both. As a driver, no medallion mafia and astronomical prices to deal with. As a rider, no taxi drivers and their horrible service to deal with.

Taxi companies are monopolies allowed by the state, it sucks for the last ones who paid $300,000 for a license to operate just before Uber took off, but technology finds its way.

Or you could just extend the law to the ride sharing services...

That’s a horrible law. What if it’s a female driver and a sketchy rider? Or worse, her abusive ex?

If you let drivers decide whom to pick up, you end up with situations like black men never being picked up.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/postever...

That’s an article about the unwanted side effects of monopolistic tax cabs.

In a competitive market, this should happen much less. And the big innovation of ride sharing is it gives a valuable tool to drivers judge potential fares with besides their appearance or pickup location, specifically their rating.

Free markets don't solve racism. The "monopolistic" taxi cab company had numerous individual drivers, each making a decision. Moving this monopoly to Uber and Lyft doesn't work. And no stars are going to override bias.

Your assumption is that the bias is only racism, when sometimes it’s racism and sometimes fear of being robbed/assaulted. Stars definitely curbs the latter.

I don't think being robbed by a passenger is a reasonable fear - after all, the app has their location, both start and end, their credit card info, and their phone number. Criminal activity by passengers is easy to catch. Fear of crime in this circumstance is reasonably other, unrelated people, which stars does nothing to prevent.

I thought we were all about equality? Are we now not about equality? I can't keep up.

And if a woman for some sexist reason can refuse a fare, why can't a man refuse a fare if, e.g., he does not like the destination area because it is riddled with crime and he is exponentially more likely to be robbed?

Of course all drivers should be able to refuse fares and refuse to pickup in specific neighborhoods.

Jesus, no. The entire point of a taxi system is a supplement to mass transit to not require private car ownership. Once you start denying the service to the people who need it the most, you're eliminating the reason for its existence.

The point of a Taxi system is to heavily regulate it into a monopoly where owners get to gouge riders and drivers have to pickup riders wherever they are told, no matter how unsafe.

We're not. Everyone just likes to pretend that they are. Every white girl likes to virtue signal about how awesome they are but the reality is that white people have the lowest [0] miscegenation rate. The reality is that those who most claim to be against bigotry are often those who most perpetuate it.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/12/interracial...

Again, another person being downvoted for living in reality and understanding that the existence of a phone app mediating things doesn't fundamentally change the risk profile of Uber from that of picking up hitchhikers.

Yes, it can absolutely happen that you pick someone up and they end up raping you. The opposite happens too, you order up an Uber when you're drunk and end up the raped one yourself. While the app might possibly offer information that makes it easier to get justice in the future, and while that may dissuade some folks, in the end crimes of opportunity like this will continue to happen.

Intelligent, self-preserving people will always use their own personal heuristics for risk management regardless of political correctness. If this ends up looking prejudiced, the problem to solve is the input information (in the form of observed events and news) that causes the prejudice, not to tell the person to just pretend that there's no reason to have such a risk calculation.

Yeah, here in The Netherlands too. Once I got into a taxi, and I ask how his business is doing, whether his car is paid off, etc. The guy tells me that he had a shitty week, because he had several days driving at a loss.

Apparently it's possible for a rather slow week to happen, in combination with rides that mean a loss for the driver.

I can't help but think that the business is quite tough.

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