No oversight. No privacy. No standards.
Can't say I blame them.
Can't say I blame them.
[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/taxi-driver-20...
[2] http://coconutgrovegrapevine.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-county...
and so on..
Call me when your "overseen, private, and up to standards" taxi has an immediate rating system that will cause the driver to effectively lose their job if they continue to provide crappy drives.
I do blame them. Bureaucracy sucks, and I can see why people would want to subvert it. Government's just mad they're not getting their vig. That's all this boils down to.
(Fixed link 1)
I am all about competition, but they don't want to compete, they want to undercut the market to destroy it and corner it so that they can then implement regulatory capture at a later point.
And if you take issue with Uber for other reasons (shady recruiting practices come to mind), there are other rideshare services that do not have those problems.
Like I said, I have nothing against competition, which is really one of the concerns people should have, because Uber knows that they are currently in a land-grab type of scenario to corner the market, especially right before autonomous vehicles come on line. Due to the nature efficiency characteristics of the future transpiration system and gargantuan barriers to entry, Uber is attempting to shut out the competition in order to put a stranglehold on transpiration. They'd eventually get broken up, but in the mean time, they can execute regulatory capture, corrupt our government in the good ol' fashioned way through lobbyists, and make billions if not trillions in the mean time.
Sure, the taxi system is corrupt down to the bone in many, if not all cities. But what Uber is doing, is riding proclaiming they are the handsome night in shining armor on a brilliantly white horse, when in fact, under the shiny armor is a wolf dressed in sheep's clothing.
Every taxi I've been in has a number to call, commonly mandated and staffed by a public agency (whose records are therefore public), when you have a problem.
When there's a convention in town, or a major sporting event, or a new taxi service that competes with an existing one, do you know how much my taxi rates go up? I'm approximating here, but (scribbles on napkin)... 0%. Pretty nice.
Here are some more hypotheticals:
If I have accessibility challenges, a quick call to a taxi dispatcher (and disabled folks generally already know these numbers, in my experience), I get the same rate, and the service is required to accommodate my special needs.
If I am engaging in a one night stand, I don't become part of a "ride of glory" dashboard.
My data points are used in predictable ways, and if I pay cash and don't rob the driver, my personal information is known by zero people. I will stipulate that cameras are in most taxis these days and, sure, let's say there's facial recognition there. The city agencies don't have a track record of using that PII in unexpected ways.
If I complain about too many taxi drivers, every other taxi driver will still pick me up.
If I'm in an accident due to some other yahoo driving badly, I know precisely the type of insurance that is carried by the taxi service.
If there's short term construction, or a particular corridor is always busy at an unusual time of day, my driver will already know about it, because there's a good chance he's been driving in this city for years. And if he hasn't, the competition to become a driver is fierce enough that he is highly motivated to be the best taxi driver he can be.
How'd I do?
No, that's not a fair assessment at all - the evidence doesn't bear that out. Just because the government isn't doing the regulating doesn't mean there is no regulation. Uber at the very least does background/license checks, and the aforementioned ongoing quality rating. It's not a free-for-all.
There's also an article[1] straight from the horse's mouth about a statistically-significant reduction in taxi crime in Chicago after Uber set up shop there. Obvious bias, but I don't see anything obviously bad with their data.
Every taxi I've been in has a number to call, commonly mandated and staffed by a public agency (whose records are therefore public), when you have a problem.
As previously mentioned, a complaint based model will necessarily be less accurate than an automatic or passive rating model - people will in general not take action to complain unless they both had an awful experience and have the time to do so. I get the feeling that the response to this will be "a bad rating does not ensure action" - but neither does a call to the public agency.
If I complain about too many taxi drivers, every other taxi driver will still pick me up.
Does Uber actually do this? They rate you immediately at drop off, presumably before you rate them. (I never got the rating prompt until after the driver had left)
How does the driver know of the history of your ratings of other drivers?
If there's short term construction, or a particular corridor is always busy at an unusual time of day, my driver will already know about it, because there's a good chance he's been driving in this city for years.
Who the heck do you think most Uber drivers are? Taking a shot in the dark here, but probably residents of the city they drive in.
..And if he hasn't, the competition to become a driver is fierce enough that he is highly motivated to be the best taxi driver he can be.
What do you think will happen to the ratings of a slow driver who makes someone late to their destination, or drives with a dirty car, or has a bad attitude? I'm going to take another shot in the dark here, but knowing what I know of the rating system, I'd wager that will get a driver drummed out of Uber a lot faster than the same behavior would get a driver dismissed from a regular taxi outfit.
I really do not get this argument - the feedback and ongoing quality checks by the rideshare companies is necessarily more immediate and more tied to actual everyday conditions and performance than the spot checks that can be performed by even the most scrupulous and well intentioned government agency.
Everything else you said was varying degrees of spot on.
I have no idea what lengths Uber goes to, but it's irrelevant. You're espousing self regulation. What happens when the next Uber competitor decides upon a different, perhaps less stringent, standard? This is why these regulations exist on the first place. The whole thing is coming full circle.
1. Unregulated service arises
2. People use said service, gains critical mass.
3. Service excludes/endangers part of the population.
4. Service is regulated by the government
5. Eventually, regulations become burdensome and are either lifted or circumvented.
6. Goto 2
..Except I'd argue that the people champing at the bit to sue/ban/regulate Uber are doing so either out of annoyance (politicos annoyed that their regs are being flouted) or greed (competitors upset that they're being undercut), with the "safety" issue being nothing more than a convenient pretext.
They are not demonstrably less safe than the "regulated" livery services.
I admit that I'm not a fan of that company and couldn't care less about their service. But IF (I don't know. Not a lawyer, no expert) the majority of their drivers aren't covered by their insurance in case of 'commercial' accidents, then yes! they are far less safe than regulated services.
On top of that Germany (because that's what the thread started out with) requires people to have a special driving license (That is NOT a taxi license. If you drive a bus or anything where you transport people from A to B for money, you're supposed to have that extended license). And that is a good thing. It checks (every 5 years, because that thing expires) that
- you're fit (physically.. Think "My eyes aren't what they used to be, but hey .. I can still drive" - your police record (you can request a file/except of your police record and you have to turn that in for this application) - you know the area
It also limits this license to people >= 21 years old that have their license for > 2 years.
So, we're having two things here (ignoring all the "But it's faster, cheaper, more convenient" crap) that relate to safety:
1) IF the drivers aren't insured, you are screwed. That is less safe, demonstrably so.
2) Given that those drivers probably don't have that commercial license: I'd say they aren't vetted as good as the taxi drivers. This is a bit more mushy, but I'd still consider this 'less safe' and the list above points out why.
Obviously 2) is specific to Germany, but 1) is a global concern, as far as I understand?
Serious question. That's a level of feedback that simply can't be provided by a government agency.
Even so, vehicle insurance doesn't come from signing the right documents. In Germany you don't get the seal on your license plate without passing mandatory regular inspections.
Edit: Bonus reason #3 -- Situations may arise where the government wants to prevent driver behavior that many riders will approve of, for example, to protect other drivers and pedestrians. For example, the government might want to use licensing to impose an extra stiff penalty on taxi drivers who violate traffic laws (i.e., license revocation or suspension). Passengers may approve of this sort of behavior if it was intended to get them to their destination faster.
The very minimum standards that players need to obey.
Customer feedback can come later, on top. But that's qualitatively very different.
Also, no government branch sued Uber. The organization of taxi cooperatives did, which is private (as are all its members).
More seriously, nobody claims that the existing regulations ensure that there will never be an issue with a taxi. The claim, of course, is that things would be worse (or, if you prefer even worse) without them.