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Comment by genericresponse | Hacker News Reader

London is somewhat of a unique taxi market because of the driver knowledge required. The black cab tests are potentially the hardest in the world. In the US cities I've lived the drivers probably know the general area of where you're going, but probably don't know the final directions.

At this point, why care about directions from the driver. Uber has built in driver GPS to tell them where to go.

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I wouldn't expect an Uber driver to know the final destinations to my home in the suburbs, but at least the general direction. Most of my Uber journeys are stationary for a couple of minutes while the driver works out the best way to go, rather than just heading off in the general direction and turning on the sat nav at a red light.

There is also knowledge that I'd expect a professional driver to have. I recall a journey I took once where the sat nav told the driver to go through a tunnel which I knew was closed. I told him to take the bridge instead to save a big waste of time.

My point is though, you do sacrifice quality for cost. I don't agree with this article that says they are cheaper and better.

I've never used Uber, but this seems easily solvable with code.

Why not have you put the destination address into the app while you're waiting, and as soon as you get in the car, the driver can just say "go", and the GPS will start?

I'm kind of surprised it doesn't already work that way.

It works exactly that way. Even in cases where you wait to tell the driver where you're going, it takes her only about 20 seconds to type the destination into their Uber app for directions, not the 'couple minutes' referenced above.

It does work that way, but it's optional. You don't have to enter the address into the app before the driver shows up and it's therefore possible that a significant number of users don't do so. My experience is that it makes the trip extremely smooth to pre-enter the address.

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