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Comment by williamdclt | Hacker News Reader

> driver-owned cooperative app that takes no profit

FWIW, the oversight of Uber on drivers is part of the success of Uber. I'm not talking about their mistreatments of drivers, but the fact that as a consumer I have reasonable confidence that the driver has been doing a decent job so far and that if I have a problem with the driver, there'd be some consequences through Uber.

It's part of what allowed their success: from unaccountable taxi mafias to a service consumers can trust.

It's far from perfect of course but it's good enough that I'm confident enough using Uber (although I avoid it for other reasons) even in foreign countries. It's probably not impossible to achieve with a co-op, but it seems more difficult

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I've been treated to the the "you're so beautiful, do you have a boyfriend" act about 2% of the time[0] I get into a stranger's car pretty much across the board, which makes me a little bit skeptical about whether these companies do meaningful oversight. It's possible that these incidents go mostly unreported though. I didn't report mine.

As an aside, this is why I generally trust public transit more whenever it's an option. The worst case scenario is just so much less sinister when there are other people around than it is in a car alone with a stranger.

[0] once in a lyft in seattle, the other in a taxicab in barcelona. figuring I've taken about 100 lifetime solo car rides with strangers which is probably an overestimate.

> It's possible that these incidents go mostly unreported though. I didn't report mine.

How would uber know? They can’t unless someone reports the driver or gives them a poor rating.

Well there are two competing factors, one of which you pointed out--not every woman who experiences harassment reports it. The other which may be less obvious is that the people who behave this way tend to do so not only repeatedly but frequently. Eventually they may harass the wrong woman and get reported. Without knowing the numbers I can't speculate more about whether lyft knew about the driver who harassed me.

I definitely trust public transport more too. I have decent confidence in my uber rides but there’s no denying that being a man is certainly helping for that

> From unaccountable taxi mafias

This is my biggest problem with taxi service in the past. Unless they behave criminally towards you and you can go to police, you were at their mercy. Any cost had to be accepted, no idea how much it would cost upfront.

There were whole scam rings around that in some parts of Europe, taking foreign customers via very elongated roads to destination. Or a story from a colleague - taxi driver in Paris literally threw out a customer in the middle of highway since he didn't like his personal political views on famous french protests. In normal situation that would mean the taxi guy losing his 200k euro medallion, in reality of course nothing, zilch, nada.

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