Hacker News Reader

Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

Because the oversight, privacy, and standards are working ever so well..

[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)

View on HN

The problem is that Uber wants all the gain without really taking on any of the responsibility, costs, or consequences beyond the bare minimum for PR and marketing purposes. In essence, they set up a system to parasitize an industry through corrupt practices.

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.

I disagree with you that it's "corrupt". Why should someone who wants to drive someone other places need to jump through more hoops than the ones Uber has in front of them? (Background check, constant ratings?)

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.

I'm talking, exactly, about the "other reasons", of which their shading recruiting practices are only one aspect. Just off the top of my head comes to mind that Uber was caught calling Lyft cars and then ditching or cancelling them or something like that. Another aspect is how they are manipulating the public to fight their self-interested battles with government for private-profit.

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.

Okay... I won't bother quoting stories about ride share drivers stealing, raping and assaulting, or doing unsafe things, because we'd go back for forth forever. I think it's fair to say that drivers can fall through the cracks. It's also fair to say that the cracks are bigger (or, to be generous, an unknown width) with a non-regulated service. But I'll go ahead and take your other bait, because certain things need to be said to ensure that this is an enlightened discussion.

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?

It's also fair to say that the cracks are bigger (or, to be generous, an unknown width) with a non-regulated service

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?

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.

[1]: http://blog.uber.com/chicagotaxicrime

>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.

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

That's a bit slippery slope for my taste (2 does not necessarily lead to 3), but in this particular case, pretty much.

..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.

Sure, this is completely within the context of this discussion. I'm not saying that Uber is bad, what I'm saying is that a bad actor will eventually crop up, which leads to regulation.

I somewhat agree with you - but then there's the insurance and license question.

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?

we're talking about germany here (where oversight and standards are generally running high), not NYC

What could be better oversight than the people actually riding in the cabs rating the quality of the service provided?

Serious question. That's a level of feedback that simply can't be provided by a government agency.

Because stuff like technical checks and insurance can't be postponed until the accidents happen, generally speaking. In the EU (at least all countries I know) third party car insurance is generally mandatory and it's details depend on how you use the car, be it commercial or private. You can of course always claim that it's a subject to "market forces" and people might opt out from insurance, but this is really not how we roll in Europe.

Actually, vehicle insurance can (and in many countries, is about to be) checked and enforced automatically, for all vehicles. At least here the police cars are getting register-plate recognition cameras that automatically check the annual inspection and insurance status of vehicles it sees, so there will be not that many uninsured cars around, Uber or not.

I'm not sure about the state of automatic license plate scans in Germany but it's a huge privacy issue and there was a big uproar when they were first introduced on some motorways for enforcing tolls for large transport vehicles. Germany is generally very anti-surveillance.

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.

Car insurance does not cover paying passengers. There is a special, more expensive, kind of insurance for this generally referred to as commercial transport insurance.

Yeah, let's health department inspections and DOT/MOT/TÜV inspections while we're at it. Because a "democratic" private rating system is inherently unquestioningly reliable and sufficient no matter the education of the participants or their means of inspection.

It's not about feedback, it's about prerequisites.

The very minimum standards that players need to obey.

Customer feedback can come later, on top. But that's qualitatively very different.

I think the general answer to this question is deceptively simple, and has two parts: 1) many of the most important regulations are preventative and relate to issues that are invisible to the average passenger (driver qualifications and training, insurance, vehicle maintenance, etc.). 2) The harm that many taxi regulations seek to prevent is disproportionate to the disciplining effect on operators of a single poor review. A serious accident, for example, will typically only affect a single rider (or group of riders) who can, at most give a zero-star review. I cannot see how the possibility of a single zero-star review out of hundreds would give a driver any incentive to do anything that costs a significant amount of money -- after all, many Uber drivers probably are used to getting the occasional bad review for no reason at all.

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.

German county governments provide taxi licenses at what I'd consider to be 'at cost'. Unlikely that this is their main concern, or even 'all this boils down to'.

Also, no government branch sued Uber. The organization of taxi cooperatives did, which is private (as are all its members).

Yes! There are two places where there have been issues with taxis. (Though the first link is broken, so I can't tell exactly what the issue is -- judging from the URL it involves a cab driver that raped passengers.) This proves that all regulations everywhere are a waste of time.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com