Taxi industry lawsuit against Uber transferred from state to US court
universalhub.com
universalhub.com
I make sure to ask every single new driver about their experience with Uber and I have heard positive things across the board, save for a few minor complaints (usually about how the cut drivers get aren't that much higher than what they'd get at a traditional cab company). Most say they love it, many say they make extra cash using it on their off-times, and some say they have entire fleets running on Uber. Overall, from my experience, the drivers love and rely on it too.
I think the secret to their success is that they've simplified and streamlined the process elegantly for both drivers and passengers. A few taps and I'm on my way without worry of if I'll even get a cab (although, to be fair, it is at times difficult to find Uber cabs in Brooklyn), and whether I brought cash/credit. But what's really interesting is how they've seemed to simplify the process just enough for drivers. They tell me that everything is provided for them, down to the dashboard mount for the included iPhone. The software itself is simple enough to work and isn't wrought with rules and requirements, and that let's drivers find their own way to make the most out of the software in ways I'm sure the creators didn't expect. For example, one driver actually ended my trip early while I was still in the car, meaning I got charged less, because he didn't want to miss any potential pickups waiting for him at my destination, which I thought was a clever trick.
My point is that Uber is providing a service that both drivers and passengers seem to universally love. No one, as to my knowledge, is getting screwed for the benefit of another. That's why all these lawsuits seem like desperate attempts to take down a company whose service they know is better on all fronts.
The drivers know, the customers know that this is changing the industry, many of the old models are being cast aside, and the only way some of the old guard can attempt to combat this is via lawsuits. Predictable, if sad.
(note: I took an Uber cab to work today :p)
The one negative thing about Uber that I've heard is from a non-Uber cab driver who said that Uber is bad because it cannot be anonymous. He then told me about all of the people he has driven who are committing crimes and marital infidelity, which are not the best examples to use. To be fair, I can think of much better examples where anonymity is valuable.
I am a HUGE Uber fan and regular user, but he did make a good point about the loss of an anonymous travel option for those who need it.
If you go anywhere in the world with less strict taxi regulation, you'll run into this. In Prague, my wife and I hopped into a cab only to find that the meter seemed to exist in a time bubble that ran 10x faster than the rest of the known universe.
I appreciate being able to hail a random car on the street and know exactly what I'm going to get. Safety and fraud issues are exactly why the industry was regulated in the first place.
To help users out with ordering cabs Yandex released an app that actually let's you order cabs and shows you pre-negotiated prices, you can pick whichever one you like (economy, premium, luxury). They include user ratings and some sort of due-diligence for taxis to get accepted to their network.
But apart from that, a Lyft-like system has existed in many cities for years. In Moscow just holding up your hand on the side of the street prompts anyone to just drive over to the side of the street and offer you a ride. Most of these are full-time or part-time drivers, but also people getting home from work who don't mind a small detour for a bit of extra cash. At a fraction of the price this is the most popular way for people to get around, although some cars look like they date back into the USSR era.
This is a perfectly acceptable scenario and I think with modern technology the market will start to regulate itself.
This meant that negotiating a price was pretty much out -- I paid what they asked, and had no real way to gauge whether that was reasonable other than asking a local. I also had no recourse if they overcharged -- what was I going to do?
Information asymmetry is a potent weapon for taking advantage of people, whether it involves taxi rates, or just how clean the restaurant's kitchen is, or how fresh the ingredients are. This is why we have regulations that attempt to provide some of the symmetry required for fair exchange.
In the case of Ebay, Uber, Airbnb, etc., technology can replace regulation as a means of providing power to the previously disadvantaged party. And, technological solutions almost always are more efficient than the regulation they replace.
Ever been somewhere where taxis appear to be completely unregulated? It can be a scary nightmare.
Why not enforce regulations on vehicle safety, accurate and fair charging and driver safety and remove the artificial restrictions on the number of people competing in the market? A lot of places outside of the US go with that approach and it can work pretty well.
I work in Chicago and have a condo in the Near West area (basically Ashland and Madison). Cabbies who are already in the area love seeing me hail them for a downtown trip because they earn a few dollars driving where they would have gone anyway without a paying customer. If the industry was un-regulated, I might consider competing with Uber by offering people with less money than time a way to get an inexpensive cab ride from one of these "backhaul" areas. Imagine an Uber-esque service where a senior citizen who wanted to go to the grocery store sometime in the next hour but only wanted to pay $3 for her trip could place a bid for a pick-up. Cabbies who dropped off a premium customer nearby could at least pay for their fuel to reposition themselves for the next premium customer. Everyone wins. It's this sort of innovation which is stifled by laws deemed to be in the best interest of consumers.
Certainly, the initial reasoning for medallion systems was quality of service and safety. As time goes by and taxi lobbyists become more powerful, they find ways to subvert this into limiting competition. Maybe some city councillor traded his vote on this issue to get a park built in his district, or for support in a primary.
It's not like some Big Government Socialist sat down, twirled his moustache, and said "I think today I will limit competition in the taxicab industry".
That might be why they persist, but the main historical reasons that led to the introduction of tax licenses were: 1) to ensure a certain level of scrupulousness and geographical competence among drivers; 2) to reduce safety incidents caused by poorly maintained vehicles (initially carriages, later automobiles); and 3) to reduce taxis' contribution to traffic congestion by limiting their absolute numbers.
The British Parliament introduced the first such system in the 17th century, responding to concerns expressed by Londoners that thousands of "hackney hell carts", driven by unscrupulous fellows and poorly maintained, were overrunning the city.
Of course, there are now alternate approaches, so maybe the idea should be modified. Vehicle safety is today taken care of separately by mandatory vehicle inspections for all roadworthy vehicles. Congestion could be dealt with through market forces by charging tolls to drive in the busiest areas during peak times, as London has already started doing.
I never announce where I want to go before I get in (I have some friends in BKLN).
One time I did get a driver who bitched about having to take me somewhere. So I made an overt stretch to look at his details posted inside the car, and then pretended to be taking a note of it. He VERY quickly complied. I didn't have to say a word.
Key: unlike tourists who I often see will peep in through the window meekly and respond to the request of "where are you going", when the car stops, just get in. You talk to the driver once inside. Not while you're on the curb.
If it's profitable to go from manhattan to brooklyn that need will be served, if it's not profitable then they need to raise the price - why should manhattan riders subsidize brooklyn?
For the sake of argument, a community might want to subsidize another class of people in order to ensure equal opportunity.
Basically, Uber made a conscious decision to not inform the driver where you're going until you're already inside the car, specifically to prevent drivers from ignoring requests to go to certain neighborhoods.
There is this notion that cabbies are discriminating against the downtrodden, but in reality, they are the downtrodden. They are low-income, immigrant people who, unlike you, actually live in those outer boroughs. People who need money so badly that they will drive a cab for a living.
You, on the other hand, are a wealthy dude. A dude with so much disposable income that you can throw $20-$40 at a cab instead of taking the subway for free. (Free as in, you already have an unlimited metro card, yes? And $20-$40 is just one way, yes? And you do this every weekend, yes?).
So you, the wealthy dude, have the law on your side. Apparently, your need for low-cost on-demand, luxury transportation trumps the basic human right to free will. Apparently, mostly white, wealthy people need to be protected from being discriminated against by mostly brown, poor people. Apparently, when a laborer refuses to take on dangerous work or insufficiently compensated work ^, we must bring in the government guns and show him who's boss.
(^) It's always money or personal safety. Discrimination has nothing to do with it and I find it rather humorous that cab takers project their own racist attitudes onto cab drivers, seeing as I don't recall a while cabbie once during my 15 years in NYC.
Also, when you say "used to routinely", you are projecting. The press made it into a banner issue, but really, think about it. "Uptown" used to be very, very poor, and poor people don't take cabs.
Is that better? I tried to use shorter sentences.
Funny that they didn't seem to have a big problem with this behavior until Uber got involved.
It was smart for Uber to take it federal as they'd have an uphill climb in a local court.
A simple fix for this issue is lying.
http://www.wmur.com/news/nh-news/All-Manchester-taxis-suspen...
The taxi industry is not a good thing to leave unregulated. If you think uber wouldn't operate just like the rest of them because they're a trendy startup, you're delusional.
I acknowledge the call for regulation is over travel destination, but in general I sense some free market idealism here that needs to be squashed.
Most people don't have a problem with some set of minimum safety regulations for an activity. Most people don't freak out about basic access and destination regulations.
On the other hand, governments creating artificial scarcity and going after business models that target this scarcity is pretty repugnant. Too many cabs is not the problem of government and will be rightly sorted out in the market place.
Government steps in with common-sense safety/destination regulations, requires cab drivers to be certified. All good. Then, these cab companies who have by necessity acquired some competence in lobbying start getting some rules in to benefit them, creating a cumbersome, crappy situation ripe for disruption.
Enter Uber. After they've had some success, the government will step in with some basic, common-sense safety/destination regulations...
The lack of commercial insurance is troubling. Who pays if an Uber car is in an accident and a passenger is severely injured?
In smaller cities like Manchester where there are only 19 cabs there is very little market pressure. Competition in large cities will put more pressure on companies. The risk of a significant lawsuit is also significant pressure to maintain vehicles.
Only if competition sticks around. In most major cities the long-term trend seems to be larger cab companies swallowing up smaller cab companies until there are only 1-2 players left, at which point competitive pressure is little to nonexistent.
However 19 cabs total for a population of 100,000 is really low. A quick google / yell shows me 109 listed taxi firms in Manchester UK. Thats about what I would expect.
Why are there only 19 actual cars in Manchester NH?
I took an Uber in Boston today. I never call cabs any other way. It's faster, more convenient, they're more accountable, and when I'm in Cambridge it allows me to get a Boston cab as opposed to the horrible, horrible Cambridge cabbies.
The drivers seem to like it too- every Boston cabbie I've taken an Uber with has told me they get lots of money from Uber rides and that it's way better than Dispatch. Some even stopped paying for dispatch and rely entirely on Uber and driving around.
I wonder what this lawsuit would look like 10 years from now, when Uber Drivers are replaced by Uber leased "Google Cars" that pick you up?
Uber is completely different from randomly hailing a cab on the street, because you can verify that the cab is from Uber and you can punish bad drivers with bad ratings. If you have a bad experience in an Uber cab, it reflects badly on Uber's brand, so Uber has a strong incentive to punish bad drivers. That's why services like Uber don't need the same regulation that regular cabs do.
Still, taxi drivers hold a strong negociation power against governement: they're strongly unionized and they don't hesitate blocking trafic in case a new law might harm their business...
I can see its some sort of aggregation service for taxi cabs, but I generally like using one particular firm, that I know vets its drivers well. Some (men & women) I know stick to women only driver firms and so forth.
A nice UI is good but I dont get it?
a) So few taxis on the roads (because the laws forbid anyone from adding more) that it is virtually impossible to hail one, like San Francisco.
b) Drivers who habitually discriminate against customers by race, desired travel location, etc.
c) Routine fraud conducted by drivers over e.g. whether a payments mechanism which is legally required such as, say, the credit card machine is actually functioning or not. (Taxi drivers in the US prefer to be paid in cash because it makes fraud easier.)
By comparison, Uber is "You push a button. A car picks you up and drives you to your destination. You do not get cheated." This is a severe competitive threat to taxis in many US cities, even at a hefty premium to what taxis are charging.
They basically have been a severe competitive threat to local mini cab firms in London, and, well, no-one sued, they just upped the game or got out. I have not got into a cab recently that I did not book on the phone and where cabbies have a sat nav, a smartphone and never use the radio, just get jobs from their dashboard.
Is it just me being a bit astonished that it seems only one firm in the continental USA has thought "I know lets be better"
P.S.
An (ex-) Londoners perspective on your other points are amusing - every cabbie wants to be paid in cash, they are famous for racisim and and you will never get a taxi south of the river at this time on a Friday mate)
But the system works. As an infrequent New Yorker it seemed to work there.
Why does this matter? Because it means the car will actually show up.
I live in San Francisco. The cabs here are terrible. You can't actually call a cab and have it show up. Most cabbies will pick up another fare if they see one on the way to you. Doing things like getting to the airport or generally arriving anywhere on time is nearly impossible if you have a 30 minute swing based on how many times you have to re-call the cab company to actually get somebody to show up.
Want to be responsible and not drink and drive after that party? Don't count on getting home from a cab.
Wow... nice play on cancer issue there. Very dirty too. One could argue that city discriminates against non-cancer patients by discounting only on specific illness. Since city is not controlling Uber, they are not forced to honour any city-issued coupons.