Uber will need to fingerprint drivers in California to transport teens | Hacker News Reader

Uber will need to fingerprint drivers in California to transport teens

techcrunch.com

23 pointsPaulHoule26 comments

When I was a teenager, I would have opposed this. But I also couldn't vote!

Why would you have opposed this as a teenager?

it might lead to drivers declining rides for teenagers and make it harder for them to get to events / concerts and etc?

Wouldn't that make teenagers capable drivers in demand more, making driving for them earn more? Making people want to do it?

Seems like an equilibrium would be reached pretty quickly.

Naturally, making teen rides more expensive.

Not the person you are responding to, but I would have opposed it because I had already read 1984.

Also, they used to have holocaust survivors come talk at school, and part of those lectures were always about enabling technologies the germans had, but the US had banned (like national ID cards, and a law saying you had to carry and present ID).

We intentionally didn’t have that sort of surveillance in the US up until the early 2000’s, but now we do. They certainly haven’t made us safer. For one thing, we also have orders of magnitude more mass shooting events. For another, the police steal stuff from people all the time using civil forfeiture.

Also, lookup deputy gangs. They’ve been a real thing in the LAPD for 50 years.

You do respond it’s about the drivers not the passengers?

California also requires fingerprints if you want to volunteer at your kid’s school.

Supposedly, they delete them (and don’t add them to the police database) after running them. I wonder how long that will last.

When they introduced car toll rfid tags they claimed something similar, but then broke the promise a few year later (and also stuck license plate recorders all over major streets in the Bay Area.)

Hmm I volunteered and did not have to give fingerprints. Is it only for certain types of volunteers?

Edit: ah I see there is a minimum number of hours.

Can drivers choose not to simply not pickup teenagers? I bet most would prefer that even without this new requirement.

An Uber driver told me about this. A lot of parents violate the TOS and have their kids take Uber. The drivers can usually tell because they are asked to pick up near a school. He stopped taking kids and the app would normally penalize him for refusing too many rides.

But, he was the one of the few drivers in that region during the daytime so the app warns, but does nothing.

Not sure of penalties, but I know one of the food delivery apps promotes you in tiers based on how many good delivers you do within a time frame.

Californa seems to be speedrunning the transition into a low-trust society.

Low-trust rules are symptoms of low-trust behavior, not causes. California tends to be early in introducing laws in general, but as far as I can tell, the entire country has been becoming more and more low-trust over the decades. It's worse in denser areas obviously, but you can see it in suburban areas and even sometimes in rural areas. I don't think it's pessimistic to say that much of the US, compared to other "developed" countries, has a problem with basic respect for strangers, neighbors, the local environment and infrastructure, public resources, businesses, etc etc etc.

Unions say that CPUC is biased towards Waymo:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/california-teamster...

This decision is silly. In previous decades, teenagers literally went hitchhiking.

That's true. And children cleaned chimneys.

I do not know which country you live in, but in the 1990s in West Europe children did not clean chimneys. But I suppose you knew that already and just wanted to discredit a comment that might be perceived as anti-Waymo. Waymo is one of the sacred cows here.

Remove the driver (i.e. with self-driving cars) and that entire threat-vector goes away.

And new threat vectors open up:

- Car can be hacked and remote controlled.

- Car has a backdoor for LE that is discovered and exploited.

- Car has a software error and drives off a bridge.

- Third person manages to enter with the legitimate guest last minute or perhaps at gunpoint.

How does the scenario of a person with a gun differ when there's a human driver? Or are more Uber driver armed than I think?

This is terrible. Taxis don't require fingerprints.

This drives up the cost of providing a service for a population that doesn't have much money to begin with. It is ostensibly safer, but that value has not been quantified. On the margin, it will encourage kids to take less safe forms of transit (e.g. drunk friend) due to higher costs and reduced availability.

It's a lengthy, private, 1 on 1 interaction with a complete stranger. I've seen nothing but (minor) problems on the uber and lyft subreddits about male drivers and young solo female passengers.

More robust processes protect everyone.

> More robust processes protect everyone.

Nobody would argue against that.

They'd argue that the cost isn't worth it or that the protection is not needed or wanted.

How much can it possibly drive up the costs? My guess is practically not at all.

It reduces the supply of drivers that are capable of getting another job.

We live in an area where uber/lyft charge below driver cost for rides, and it has created a public safety issue.

The roads near our house are mildly challenging, and almost all drivers that do come here should have their drivers licenses taken away. We don’t have this problem for in-town trips.

Anyway, more experienced / smarter drivers will probably realize they don’t want the incremental income from teenagers. Uber/lyft will either have to increase the price of those trips, mandate fingerprints for all, or car accidents involving teens in ride share cars will go up.

Read the article:

> California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a ruling Thursday that requires taxi and ride-hail drivers who are carrying unaccompanied minors in the state to pass a fingerprint background check

So, yes this does apply to taxis.

The second sentence says they do require taxis. Please read the article.

"The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a ruling Thursday that requires taxi and ride-hail drivers who are carrying unaccompanied minors in the state to pass a fingerprint background check"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com