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Comment by dia80 | Hacker News Reader

This kind of concerns me. I have a T4/T5 spinal cord injury from a snowboarding accident 4.5Y ago. I have good hand and arm function but that's it no abdominals etc. I drive myself to work everyday and transfer in and out and fold up my wheelchair.

London's black cabs all have ramps. UBER is making big inroads here and I'm worried that eventually it'll be tricky to get a black cab. I can transfer into a regular car but I would need the driver to put my wheelchair in the boot (trunk) and given busy streets, harassed drivers, needing to pull right up to the kerb etc. I've not really had the guts to try it. It's particularly relevant here as the tube is mostly inaccessible and the buses painfully slow.

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> London's black cabs all have ramps.

It's worth noting that this is due to a legal requirement that all licensed taxis (i.e. black taxis) must be wheelchair accessible. I think that requirement came into force around 1999 and it resulted in a lot of older taxis that weren't wheelchair-accessible being sold on the second-hand market when their owners were forced to upgrade.

So, in addition to successfully completing the Knowledge[1], black taxi drivers must operate using a compliant vehicle (which is inevitably more expensive than a normal vehicle, which Uber drivers typically use), and they must pick up anyone (including a disabled person who hails them while their light is on (if they ignore you or refuse to carry you without good reason, you can complain to the Public Carriage Office, which can take away a driver's taxi license).

In return for complying with all these requirements, licensed taxi drivers are allowed to pick people up on the street and calculate the fare using a taximeter.

Other cab drivers (driving what are typically referred to as minicabs or "private hire vehicles") are supposed to agree a fare with the passenger up front and are specifically prohibited, by law, from using a taximeter.[2]

London's licensed taxis drivers' view is that the Uber app is effectively a meter, and therefore, Uber drivers are breaking the law. The High Court will rule on the matter this summer.[3]

1: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/london-taxi-te...

2: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/34/section/11

3: http://www.cityam.com/212676/high-court-ruling-taximeters-co...

> Other cab drivers (driving what are typically referred to as minicabs or "private hire vehicles") are supposed to agree a fare with the passenger up front and are specifically prohibited, by law, from using a taximeter.

Their lives must be miserable without The Queen's "taximeter"!

I think the UK situation is fair. If the uber app lets you go to random destinations, or charges you extra per the mile, then it is a meter.

Uber should be just like a black car service: point A to point B, with no extras. If Uber doesn't find this as profitable, they're free to open a segment of their company that actually is a taxi service and follows regulation in exchange for picking up the public and being able to run a meter on public traffic.

The problem is that taxi regulation doesn't make any sense to begin with. As you said, people get transported from Place A to B for a fee.

Fundamentally, it's as simple as buying a pound of cheese from a supermarket. It's just a transaction between people.

So why should taxi drivers have to get "licensed"? What exactly is that license? What does it represent besides going through a burdensome ordeal? How would getting licensed increase safety in any way? It's not like anyone wants to experience a car crash.

The real point of the exercise is to maintain a state-supported taxi-cartel. Higher prices for the masses, and higher profits for the cartel. Desperation and hardship for the debt-slave drivers.

The logic for street hails is that it's fundamentally impossible to negotiate prices or quality of service ahead of time. Enforcing a uniform price & service standard lends predictability to the procedure.

Impossible?

    - How much for taking me from here to <Place X>?
    - That would be $40.
    - Alright, let's go.

Quality of service would involve various things, but there could be a big taxi company called Toober, for example, with a good reputation, so you could reasonably expect to receive at least decent service from their drivers, and there would be no problem.

If you were feeling more adventurous, you could opt for a small(er) provider without an established reputation, but it would cost a bit less than Toober. Most likely, there would be no problem.

As a sidenote, whoever downvoted this and the other related post is allergic to thinking.

Please don't post comments like this, which break the site guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, the real problem here is inane downvotes, not that I pointed it out.

> So why should taxi drivers have to get "licensed"? What exactly is that license? What does it represent besides going through a burdensome ordeal? How would getting licensed increase safety in any way? It's not like anyone wants to experience a car crash.

All businesses must be licenced. Taxi licensing is special because of their special circumstance. They conduct their business primarily on public streets, and without licensing to ensure fair pricing and service to clientele they may:

(a) 'forget' about picking up people of a certain skin color (b) refuse fare to a certain district they don't like (c) arbitrarily set fares depending on what they see as people's willingness to pay--like say setting the fare for single women outside nightclubs to 3x the normal rate.

All of these things I've seen in unregulated environments and to a lesser extent (a & b ) in regulated environments too.

You're seeing problems that aren't really there.

> All businesses must be licenced.

Why? Why the hell would a grocery store need a license and what for? I'm not asking for "because the government says so", because the government says a lot of things that don't actually make sense. Is there a good, objective reason for all businesses to have to be licensed and how would the license help?

> Taxi licensing is special because of their special circumstance.

What does that mean? What are the special circumstances? It's just people with cars and people who need to go places.

> (a) 'forget' about picking up people of a certain skin color

Suppose there was no regulation for taxis. Now suppose a big taxi company had emerged. Let's call it "Toober". Now Toober, just like most companies, wants to make as much money as possible.

Do you think people accusing its drivers of racism would be conducive to that goal, and if not, do you think Toober would do something about racist drivers?

What about the drivers? They want money too, right? So if there was a racist driver working for Toober, and he knew Toober doesn't tolerate racism because it's bad for their image and thus, bottom line, don't you think the driver would refrain from behaving in a racist way so that he could keep his job?

> (b) refuse fare to a certain district they don't like

Don't like? Because it somehow displeases them like Justin Bieber's music displeases a lot of guys? What sense would it make for a taxi to leave money on the table because he finds a district distasteful?

> (c) arbitrarily set fares depending on what they see as people's willingness to pay--like say setting the fare for single women outside nightclubs to 3x the normal rate.

Again, imagine Toober getting complaints about discrimination. On the other hand, getting home safely from a night out is a more valuable service than just getting from Place A to B in less dangerous situation, so maybe it's alright to charge a bit more.

Sure, three times the normal rate would be too much, but another taxi company would be free to offer a better rate, and people would take it.

Do you see why regulation is not necessary at all? Whenever the government says it's doing something for your safety or for fairness, you can be 100% sure the results and real reasons are different.

The real reason why we have taxi regulations is to maintain a state-supported taxi-cartel.

In the UK the Black Cab drivers have special rights. E.g. they are allowed to stop on cycle lanes, hairpin corners, etc. They are allowed to use engines which has 3x more emissions than a VW Golf 1.6TDI.

So they are licenced to serve the selfish customers who don't care whether they endanger others with hailing a taxi at a place they should not and they don't care others who have to inhale the fumes.

I think its fair to say...

Follow all these regulations and we'll let you do business on the public streets.

Do business in private, via the phone or internet, and you don't have to follow these regulations.

---

Don't force the choice by saying regulations apply to everyone, even people who aren't going to get any benefit out of it. Uber doesn't have to use wheel-chair accessible vehicles, but they also can't respond if someone hails them on the street. This isn't a problem because they're fairly successful, but I imagine in a more competitive environment they'd actually feel the pinch by seeing other people picked up by random cabs, or black cars but they can't even interact with the customer who is 5 feet away from them because it's not via the app.

Or:

You may do transportation business on our roads if you follow our regulations, with no regard to how the ride was arranged.

Non-disabled rider's fares subsidizing accessibility for the disabled is no different than how health insurance works. Why would we allow Uber to freeload? Because they're "innovative"? Or "disruptive"?

No. Follow the rules Uber or GTFO out of the market.

> Non-disabled rider's fares subsidizing accessibility for the disabled is no different than how health insurance works.

Well I guess I'm of the belief that health insurance is a doomed concept, and the government should directly manage and subsidise and industry of health care not insurance, and pay for it by directly taxing the citizens rather than expecting a private group to somehow work better than democratic process.

In London there are two sets of regulation: the regs for black cabs and the regs for mini cabs.

Uber doesn't want to comply with either set of regs.

There are some considerable problems in UK minicabs avoiding their duties under disability discrimination laws -- not turning up; refusing to carry; refusing dogs (and not because the driver has an alergy; over charging and stealing from some users (eg blind people or those with a learning disability). So Uber is not unusual there.

Uber in the UK uses licensed taxi drivers the same as any other Private Hire firm. I think they'd have an extremely hard time claiming that they are exempt from UK and EU law. Furthermore, Black Cabs are an entirely different taxi group and the competition between them is regulated AFAIK.

> Uber in the UK uses licensed taxi drivers the same as any other Private Hire firm.

That is not correct.

Is it not? Can you tell me why all the Ubers I use have the exact same markings and plates as private hire firms? I'm in Manchester.

> licensed taxi drivers

> private hire firms

You need to learn the difference between these.

I think what we'll eventually see are Uber drivers purchasing their own ramps and Uber marking them as wheelchair-friendly, with the customer given the ability to request a wheelchair-friendly car. In turn this would probably pressure other Uber drivers to also get ramps so they're able to compete, and the majority of fulltime Uber drivers will eventually get ramps.

Edit: this might also extend to things like baby seats and various other specialized passenger modifications.

Yeah they did that in Houston and Sydney, Australia

http://blog.uber.com/UberACCESSHou

http://blog.uber.com/WATSYD

They won't compete. There's a reason that the ADA exists and it's not because people are mean, it's because it's more expensive to support people with disabilities. And because disabled customers are a very small portion of the total customers service providers would just forgo their business. The end result being there is no competition and without a legal requirement, there would generally be no accommodations.

The issue isn't that Uber is discriminating. In fact, the subject of the article was a twice weekly user of Uber for two years. A single driver didn't think the wheelchair would fit in the car. It seems like something that should be reported, and the driver should be dealt with. To take an issue that happens less than 1% of the time and make it sound like it's UBER is a bit absurd.

No, it happened twice to her in two weeks.

The question is, does Uber have training in place on what rights a disabled passenger has? Do they discipline or dismiss drivers who receive disability complaints?

It sounds like Uber's response has been that it has no duty to support or enforce the ADA.

Uber is forcing taxis out of business. One of the reasons that taxis are regulated is that they are bound by law to transport the disabled. If we are going to let Uber put them out of business, then we have to aggressively protect the rights of the disabled.

Taxis are regulated primarily because they do business on public streets. If the only way to get a taxi were to call them up, there'd be far less of a reason to regulate them.

Do you mean to say that it's okay for private operators to discrimate based on whether their potential client is disabled or not (when it has nothing to do with the safety of the client or the driver)?

You're using discriminate in an odd way. Is it discrimination to not set yourself up to be able to provide service for someone because of an additional cost?

Can you explain why that would be?

In any case, in many locales it's almost entirely unheard of to street-hail a taxi. To name two places I've lived, in Boston and Silicon Valley, you always need to call for a taxi, unless you happen to be staying at a hotel in a downtown area.

If taxis do not generally pick up people from the street, then they should not be forced to conform with special regulations designed for taxis that pick up the public on the street.

However, they should additionally be barred from picking up clients on the street.

Easy solution: Put a big button on the app "Report ADA violation"

That part of the story is just an example. The point of the story is the argument Uber is using in the lawsuit. Uber maintains it's not a taxi service and therefore not responsible for the drivers actions or the accessibility of the vehicle. Additionally, suggesting that this is a 1% problem like it's a minor edge case bug is outrageously insensitive. This problem impacts real people.

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