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Comment by yarcob | Hacker News Reader

I think you are giving service providers way too much leeway.

Service providers should offer their service to everyone, not just to "easy" customers. Service providers should not reject you because you are disabled, because you have a child, because you have a certain religion, or whatever else is the problem.

If someone is in the business of transporting people, they shouldn't be allowed to just pick the most profitable customers. Because if you allow that, everyone will try to undercut the competitors prices to get the "good" customers, and nobody will bother to offer services to the not so profitable customers.

There's nothing wrong with needing some special accomodations, and you shouldn't have to apologise to the driver for taking two minutes to fasten a child seat.

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Oh you mean like a licensing system that requires drivers to pick up all passengers? /s

HAAS Act '37

NYC TLC '71

Operation Refusal '98

Not that NY has it exactly right, but at least there was some structure.

The entire business model of Uber is regulation avoidance. They did not "distrupt" any business they just did as you said and stole all the profitable easy routes/riders, avoided pricing regulations, and driver compensation regulations.

Just curious, have you ever actually taken many cabs in cities? Or Ubers?

I see this complaint all the time and I truly can't wrap my mind around it based on my own experience. The difference between yellow cabs and Ubers is night and day. I've had countless cabs drive away and refuse to pick me up because they didn't like where I was going, and that's never once happened with Uber (I'm sure it happens some behind the scenes but once I get matched with a driver it's very reliable).

There's even an entire industry in NYC of "gypsy cabs" in some of the outer boroughs, because the limited number of medallioned yellow cabs never go out there since it's not profitable enough.

I've nearly missed flights twice because of uber drivers canceling on me - 10-15 min after accepting the ride In Columbus, Ohio and Panama. If you've ever tried to get taxis in Panama you know they're worse though.

If I'm going to take uber to the airport, I'm careful now to leave an extra 30 min over the two hours I would normally plan for.

I got off a bus once, at night, by mistake, in what seemed like a very bad part of town. I was waiting for the next bus to carry me away but became uncomfortable with my surroundings and so tried to get an Uber to come first. I had four or five cancel on me immediately after getting assigned and wound up having to wait for the bus anyway. I've never experienced that before or since with Uber.

Uber doesn't punish drivers for cancelling anymore because it kept being used as an argument that drivers are employees, not contractors.

Taxi's do the same thing. Wouldn't come to the location I was in, hung up, told us we were in a bad neighborhood and shouldn't be there. Eventually the bus came, we didn't want to wait 60 minutes with luggage.

back few years ago, entering the destination was optional, and I had people cancel on me after knowing the destination.

now it doesn't make sense because they know where you're going before they accept.

some have told me that if they reject too many rides the algorithm punishes them.

It's a convenient narrative, but if you ever tried getting a cab in the Sunset in 2005 you'd know that at least in some places Uber dramatically improved the ability to get equal opportunity transportation.

I’ve had way more yellowcabs in nyc refuse to take me to the airport than ubers/lyfts.

Uber certainly disrupted that industry. I would never get into a cab unless I absolutely had to. Now I'm not getting a new car once my lease is up because I uber everywhere I go.

While you have the right idea, the problem is that taxi laws are not enforced enough to deter ride-discrimination behavior. Plenty of times before Uber/Lyft I had cab drivers refuse a ride because they didn't want to drive outside of the city at the most lucrative hour, or they'd just refuse to stop.

Yep, I was talking about Uber/Lyft et al with someone recently and going over the point that these services are finding out that Taxi services charge what they charge and operate how they operate due to very good reasons on the whole.

There's a lot of institutional knowledge baked into the cab industry and Uber/Lyft thought they could figuratively reimplement the whole deal in a weekend.

So in this setup a driver allergic to dogs should not be allowed to drive for Uber?

Realistically, yes? If their allergies are such to the point that they cannot be physically in the presence of a service animal for any length of time, they may be required to decline the fare and the income.

We impose a lot of duties on people who are employed in the service of the general public. Humans are messy, unpredictable, inconsistent beings with unique needs so, yes, it is possible that two humans will be a mismatch for each other in the public sphere.

The law, and society in making that law, has generally decided that the right of a person with particular needs--such as a service animal or a carseat--outweigh the rights of someone to ply a trade in a customer-facing role. And, given the level of discrimination that people with those needs experience on a daily basis, I happen to think this is a fair trade-off. The person with the needs may not have a choice, or may have fewer choices, than the service provider.

I think you said yes to the parent comment but are not actually saying yes. Saying that "people with dog allergies cannot drive with Uber" is discrimination; allergies are also legally considered disabilities under the ADA[0]. Plus why would it be nessary if only a small portion of people have animals, and an even smaller portion need them for disabilities?

What should happen is allow drivers to get a doctor's note that marks their car as unstable for allergies (that way they can't make it up to discriminate). Also allow customers to mark themselves as needing to avoid animals or needing animal-friendly cars. You don't even have to show this information to either party: Uber can automatically choose the right car.

The law doesn't say every single driver has to pick up people that need service animals. It just says reasonable accommodations must be made.

[0] https://www.aafa.org/asthma-allergies-and-the-american-with-...

And Uber has been forced to pay up the $1.1M precisely because they haven't bothered to make any of these reasonable accommodations.

The ADA does not apply to independent contractors - Uber does not have to accommodate driver disabilities AFAIK.

But then it would be in the full right of someone with dog allergies to refuse service to someone with a service animal. Their being able to live completely trumps the person's ability to get a car. Then the customer who was refused service would probably feel discriminated against (because Uber did not make reasonable accommodations to prevent this) and we are back where we started.

So it’s not fair that some cars can’t accommodate all passengers of all sorts with any various disability, but it’s fair to deny employment to those with some sort of disability (animal allergies). Odd perspective.

Animal allergies (as opposed to asthma triggered by animal dander) is only considered a disability is it actively affects your ability to breathe or otherwise function in pretty basic ways. So, yes, under the ADA in the US, denying someone employment with allergies is fine but refusing to give rides to service dogs is not.

Of course, a simpler solution would be to have Uber choose an appropriate car that was willing to give rides to service animals.

Outside of service animals (actual service animals not "support animals") I think it should be perfectly fine to reject transporting peoples pets.

I also think it should be fine to have a "no children" policy, we have all kinds of business we do not allow children in, and personally i would like to see more business adopt a no children policy.

No, Uber simply needs to accommodate a passenger with a service dog, by assigning the closest non-allergic driver to them, and the driver not refusing service.

I would suggest that if the allergies are sufficient enough to reach disability, that instead of "Uber needs to assign the closest non-allergic driver" (because the ADA doesn't require that a passenger state that they have a service animal) ...

Rather, Uber needs to offer accommodations to drivers. Modification of the vehicle so that the driver and passenger areas are separate and the there is sufficient air filtration.

This way, Uber would be handling both disabilities appropriately with the ADA by providing the respective accommodations.

This sounds nice in theory, and, sure, it will solve the situation with a driver having a dog allergy.

But what about a more common and realistic scenario, where the driver doesn't have the allergy, but the next Uber passenger does (the one who gets into the car after the passenger with a dog leaves)? Do you propose to perform full sterilization of the vehicle after every passenger with a dog (and I mean an actual full sterilization, not just wiping the seats clean)? Because otherwise, the dog dander particles will still be present in the vehicle in some capacity, thus causing an allergic reaction in the next passenger who has allergies.

I think the challenge for Uber is that (despite being illegal) it still makes way more sense for a driver to pass up a $10 fare than spend 15 minutes in close proximity to an animal they're allergic to followed by however long it would take to sanitize your car afterwards. If drivers were employees, then Uber could just say "do it or you're fired" but as independent contractors the situation is much harder.

This.

Blind passengers need to have reasonable access to cars. If Uber wants to play in that market, they need to figure out how to accommodate those passengers. If the driver needs a screen, or a stack of N95 masks, to avoid allergies, that should be Uber's responsibility to provide.

What stops every driver from checking the "I'm allergic to dogs" box?

A premium that is paid by the passenger with a dog.

Ideally that premium should mostly go to the driver, minus the regular Uber cut.

That is specifically and explicitly prohibited by the ADA. The service may not charge more for an individual with a service animal than an individual without.

I agree with people with service dogs should be picked up and blind people.

But my thoughts drifted to what if a driver without allergies picked up a passenger with a service dog, that driver would then presumably need to spend time vacuuming the car such that another passenger with allergies isn't also impacted?

That could be a reasonable accommodation. Another reasonable accommodation would be to send another car.

Imagine if the Uber driver himself had a dog, and showed up to pick an allergic passenger up. What would the reasonable accommodation be in that case? Depending on how severe an allergy is, no amount of vacuuming is going to make a ride in such a car pleasant for the passenger.

In the UK, a taxi/private hire vehicle driver can get an exemption if they are medically unable to take assistance dogs, or help passengers in a wheelchair.

My local council's guidance on the topic:

https://www.bristol.gov.uk/licences-permits/exemption-wheelc...

Everyone seems to be avoiding the real question. When is Boston Dynamics going to disrupt the guide dog industry?

UC Berkeley is apparently looking into it: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2273390-robot-guide-dog... .

I agree with you, but the issue is that the Uber driver doesn't have control over it. If the driver were in charge, they would make their policy that the ride starts on arrival of the passenger and ends on departure of the passenger. But Uber doesn't do that -- they start the ride when the car moves and ends it when the car stops at the destination. So the driver loads and unloads on their own time. They aren't compensated for differences in accommodations per passenger.

I try to make up for this by telling the driver to start the ride the moment I arrive and not end until I leave, but not everyone does that.

This is someone's personal property we're talking about. Should they forced to shuttle around drunken and incontinent people too? Why should anyone be coerced with being kicked off of a platform and losing (their possibly only) source of income because they don't want piss, shit, and vomit in their car?

> Should they forced to shuttle around drunken and incontinent people too?

Holy red herring, Batman. Are you serious equating drunk people with disabled people who need physical accommodations? The ADA does not have anything to say about mandating accommodations for drunk people.

Separately, people who are incontinent actually, you know, do things to manage their condition (like wear adult diapers as necessary). They aren't just randomly shitting everywhere. Your contrived examples are just downright offensive.

I didn't read it as fully a red herring.

1. It was in response to the poster that put forward a proposition that any and all passengers must at all times be taken; let's not take the response fully out of context just to attack it with outrage.

Similarly, I charitably assumed by "drunk & incontinent" they mean, literally and as written, "those who are irresponsibly drunk to the point of losing control over their bodily functions"; not those who may have a permanent and manageable/managed medical issue.

2. In practical terms, if I may be blunt and practical for a second, a e.g. service animal shepherd: a) Legally and morally SHOULD be allowed b) ...Yet is absolutely equivalent to a vomiting drunk in terms of cleanup expenses (and in some ways worse - follow-up passengers may have severe allergy issues, or even the driver themselves!)

There's no easy "win" here. We have to acknowledge the necessity of regulating/providing for all; but also the non-zero impact on the actual real live person driving the car. They are human too!

> Yet is absolutely equivalent to a vomiting drunk in terms of cleanup expenses

I know which I'd rather clean up after

It stopped being their personal property the moment they started using it to run a business. Now its business property. They don't have to allow unruly/drunk/etc customers, but there are grounds its not ok to discriminate on when running a business.

In this case, I think people need to realize what they are signing up for. If you deliver pizza it's a given you will start reeking of pizza. Uber is notoriously used for designated driving, and anyone surely knows by adult hood that having diarrhea isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when, and basic probability would tell you eventually will get a customer with diarrhea or someone who is about to throw up their tequila. Luckily Uber has some protections for you in the cleaning fee charged to the offending customer, but with Uber's excellent way around lobbying, that's about all the protections to your vehicle you can ask for with this gig.

Uber and taxi drivers are allowed to refuse drunk passengers, but they are not allowed to refuse passengers with disabilities (thanks to the ADA). It's a completely different situation.

This is not the only issue. It is an extension to a bigger issue, cancelling rides.

There are many time I have Uber driver cancelling my ride from the airport because my destination is not the big metro center, rather, just outside of it. The driver was quick to accept the request, then called and then cancel the ride. Of course, the driver would said the customer "request the cancellation".

This wasted so much of people's time.

Please don't tell with all those smart people Uber have in their payroll couldn't figure out this. Or they simply ignore it.

This wastes time and cost 5$. More than once a driver has not been able to find me at the airport (despite me giving directions as to where I am) and then cancelled the ride. This weekend I needed a ride after I missed a flight, the driver shows up and after 15 minutes of me walking around the garage looking for them the ride is cancelled and I get a 5$ charge. I’m sure you can dispute this, and they’ll likely side with you, but it’s 5$ and I’d bet they bet on most people thinking their time is worth more than 5.

I dispute this every time it happens, because it counts against your rider score and can stop you from getting rides in the future, or doom you to being matched with low-ranked drivers.

This should be easily solved if the system were working correctly. That is independent contractors were able to make bid on ride request. Undesirable destination? Customer just has to offer price someone is willing to offer a service at. At some price point someone is willing to do the job.

The whole point of granting taxi medallions in the first place was to provide a semi-monopoly on the service, in return for requiring taxi drivers to act like a public utility. There’s a societal benefit to being able to get a ride from wherever, to wherever for a pre-determined fare, without having to worry that your destination is a “bad neighborhood” or your skin is the wrong color or your guide dog might not be allowed.

We should not let ride sharing services just gut this aspect of hired car service.

So we should ban them from operating without medals? You can't have it both ways... And I don't understand why shouldn't free market apply to them as well. Or maybe start applying it to all labour. Demand that all workers can be hired at certain price level for any job...

You CAN have it both ways. We can still hold the business to requirements that we set, that represent a baseline of public acceptability, with or without medallions.

"The free market" isn't an answer to everything. We decide as a society that some forms of market pricing are not allowed. For instance, I can not pay children to work for me. I can not pay a woman less than a man. I can not pay an old person less than a younger one. I can not refuse service to someone who has a disability. These are social choices that we make, and I would argue that we SHOULD make, to restrict the free market in ways that benefit society as a whole.

Good point. Please note that I wrote: "There's nothing wrong with needing some special accomodations". I did not say you need to accomodate everything.

If someone is drunk enough that he's going to piss and throw up in the car, it might be a better idea to call an ambulance instead.

But to be honest, if you are in the transportation business, someone is going to fuck up your car sooner or later, and you really need to take potential cleaning costs into account. That's just part of the job.

Don't want your car to get dirty from driving people? Then don't offer to drive people.

Because the Americans With Disabilities Act tells them they have to.

ADA also says these accommodations need to be readily achievable. Considering the income level of people working at rideshares, it's really not achievable and extremely unfair.

Uber has tens of billions of dollars. They have to be able to achieve it, as this ruling shows. They cannot violate the ADA. Playing the whole contractor charade may help them to get around minimum wage laws but it's not gonna help them get around the ADA.

Saying that Uber doesn't have to comply with ADA because they pay their employees (sorry, contractors) nowhere near enough money seems like one of those "two wrongs don't make a right" situations.

I think the ADA would argue that allowing these people to enter your car is perfectly achievable. If you throw up in an Uber you get billed a cleaning fee.

We’re talking about letting a guide dog into your vehicle. It’s not like they were asked to transport toxic waste - it’s a guide dog. How is that remotely unfair??

If they're ferrying passengers for compensation then they absolutely should follow the law (including ADA). If they don't want to deal with all types of passengers then they don't have to be in that business.

I’m wondering if you’re trying to make a different point than the one I seem to think you made. To me, it sounds like you’re comparing people who choose to become intoxicated with differently abled people. If I choose to get so drunk that I’m vomiting, kick my dumb ass out of your vehicle. But if I’m sight impaired and have a guide dog?? If you kick me out of the vehicle, you’re not only an asshole but you’re an asshole who deserves to lose everything you worked for!

I must have read your comment wrong. Sorry if I misrepresented you, but I can’t figure out where I’ve gone wrong.

I think you are giving service providers way too much leeway.

The problem is that Uber is getting work from the driver in order to meet Uber's obligations but without compensating the driver. The extra work required to e.g. clean the interior of the car after a service dog has been transported should be paid by Uber to the driver.

It's always the case that some trips are more profitable than others: for example there is another passenger to pick up immediately at the same place you dropped the last passenger off at. So while it matters that in total Uber driving is profitable for the driver it is not necessary that the 2% or so of the trips with blind passengers are.

Correct. If the drivers are treated as independent contractors and account for vehicle costs and paying themselves at least minimum wage for all working time, the profit margin on rides is quite slim, potentially to the point where the additional time to clean the car means a driver makes less than minimum wage. Were it an actual company, that would be illegal. Under Uber's model, it's "they are an independent contractor, we just match them with rides and handle billing."

Uber does provide training that says drivers must accept service dogs. However, if there are issues, they are uncommon enough and the likelihood of a driver getting sued is low enough that a driver may just drive away.

My gut tells me that drivers should be employees, or limits should be placed on using single-person independent contractors to provide a service like this. It's not going to solve every problem and the traditional "taxi" mentality is going to remain, but I remember the early days of Uber when drivers could not reject too many rides and stay on the platform, and it did seem to solve some of the management problems with drivers. Heck, maybe the answer is to contract the work out to car management companies with real HR departments like the airlines do with regional jet flying, so that Uber can insist on their high quality product and performance metrics and drivers can be employees.

>>Because if you allow that, everyone will try to undercut the competitors prices to get the "good" customers, and nobody will bother to offer services to the not so profitable customers.

They're not a charity. If you want to help the less fortunate, then donate directly to them.

Or if you believe that helping the less fortunate should be something people should be required to do, under pain of imprisonment, then advocate taxing people, and using that revenue to directly subsidize the less fortunate.

There's no reason the mandatory charity should fall entirely on service providers. It's not even an efficient way to help the less fortunate. If they received cash subsidies instead, then service providers would crop up that specialize in servicing people who have their disability, and would provide a far higher quality of service per dollar spent.

The idea is that larger companies in the space (like Uber) should be the ones subsidizing the drivers. Just like we could have offered complex taxes and subsidies to encourage banks to invest in local communities, but instead we just passed a law. Or simply required private insurers to supply insurance regardless of preconidtions.

Uber, Bank of America, and Blue Cross are big enough they can handle mixing the more and less valuable customers themselves, and don't need a government program.

They eventually pass the cost down to consumers. Even profits, redirected from shareholders, to these projects, indirectly costs consumers in the form of reduced investment that would otherwise enchance productivity and bring down consumer prices.

I'm arguing that we shouldn't be forcing private companies, large or otherwise, to fulfill social justice agendas, because it creates an unstable business environment where firms can be encumbered by any conceivable regulatory barrier to participating in the marketplace. It's also mixing concerns, leading to less optimized and well thought out social interventions. For example, forcing banks to lend in high-credit-risk neighbourhoods turned out to be a huge mistake, as this article from 21 years ago presciently warned:

https://www.city-journal.org/html/trillion-dollar-bank-shake...

If we do decide to force society to collectively help the less fortunate, it should be out of general revenue, in the form of cash subsidies.

If a disabled person gets $1,000 a month, they may use it for more rides, or they may find their money can go further if they instead pay to have service providers do home-visits to their place. Or they may rent special exo-suits that let them operate like a non-disabled person. Letting the affected party decide will let them maximize the return they get from the resources being allocated to the cause of helping them.

I disagree with that. There's enough offerings on the market to cover everything. Companies should be able to differentiate their offerings and target certain categories of the population. If something doesn't fit you - don't use it.

I stopped using Uber when I got a child. I didn't have the app installed for 4 years now. Simply because they don't offer a service with child seat. I'm not bringing my own child seat, no way. Instead, I'm using bubs taxi in Sydney that will come with child seat and other stuff that may be necessary when you travel with a toddler. They target families with kids. If we to follow you "obligation" on the companies to serve anyone, there would be no bubs taxi for me to use.

Subsidies for these passengers might go further than an edict they they must transport these passengers. It's the carrot vs. the stick.

>>Service providers should not reject you because you are disabled, because you have a child, because you have a certain religion, or whatever else is the problem.

What about the incorrect political beliefs, are you saying I have to transport a Republican? or a Nazi?

There is no “should”. Service providers can do whatever they please. Look up Masterpiece Cake Shop.

When Twitter banned the sitting POTUS, I learned from HN commenters that they are private business and can do whatever they want (TM)

I understand what you are saying, but reality doesn't agree with this worldview. The reality of the situation is that some people need more help than others, and this help does cost more money/time/labor. I think overall it is a better experience if the marketplace for these services prices in the extra labor necessary for this help.

Perhaps the government could subsidize the lost time. However expecting workers to do more work for less pay is not in line with human nature.

Having children is expensive, and parents should be factoring in paying extra to do things.

The problem you are outlining is that picking up non-special needs customers is the most profitable way to be an uber driver. If there was a bonus for picking up "special needs" passengers, the incentive problem could be fixed. Right now, "special needs" passengers just get worse service, and it will always be this way unless human nature fundamentally changes or they gain a way to signal to drivers that it will be worth the driver's extra time.

Many Uber drivers barely make minimum wage.

> Many Uber drivers barely make minimum wage.

Because they're legally allowed to be underpaid contractors. The law should be changed to fix the root cause, not to change this side effect. Uber drivers aren't barely making min wage because they have no incentives to pick up disabled people ...

By "fix the root cause" you mean shut down uber right? because if all the "solutions" I have seen just in this thread were required (everything from Uber outfitting every car with Hypoallergenic compartments, to paying drivers extra for different types of customers (with out charging extra to the customer ofcourse) ) then the cost of the ride would be so prohibitively expensive that no one would use the service

People seem to have this mythical belief that uber can pay every driver to drive a brand new car, at 100/hr, providing the best service for every customer every time all for 1/2 the price of a taxi

It simply not economically possible

However, that is how regular taxi services work... and they're profitable. They don't ignore the ADA. They allow service animals. They help with wheelchairs and storing them appropriately - even if that requires more time for the driver. That extra cost of service is spread out across all customers and its a non-issue.

Uber's business model of trying to disrupt the taxi service by ignoring regulations is at issue here. With the ADA, they've encountered an issue that the court is not letting them ignore.

>>However, that is how regular taxi services work... and they're profitable.

That really depends on the location, and many are not profitable and in some area many only service some parts of the town / city.

Sure if you are in a large city like NYC, LA, Chicago etc, then it would be different but if you start getting out of the top 50 cities the profitability starts to drop

Also clearly taxi's are not providing the service at the value demanded of users or Uber would not exist

If Uber cannot afford to pay their drivers minimum wage, they should raise more money and operate at a loss for longer or raise fares or shut down. Any of those three solutions seem to work. And those are basic, there are others.

Well yeah, if the service can't treat people decently and make a profit of course it should shut down ...

What if it treats 95% of of the population decently and makes a profit?

Anyone knows that getting to 80% is easy, getting from 80-90 is normally $$$$ and getting to 99.99999999999995% which is what the thread it about is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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