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Too bad, so sad... If they hadn't allowed their service to get so horrible, with nasty old cars, drivers that don't speak English and drive around in circles t

Too bad, so sad... If they hadn't allowed their service to get so horrible, with nasty old cars, drivers that don't speak English and drive around in circles to increase fares, drivers claiming their card readers are "broken" so you have to pay cash, taking an hour to show up when called, passing by black people, etc., then this wouldn't be happening. From the article: "Cab drivers, on the other hand, maintain that they undergo more rigorous criminal checks, enjoy more robust insurance, and generally have better knowledge of city streets." Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Haven't they heard of Google Maps and Waze and GPS? This just shows how out-of-touch and behind-the-times the cab industry is. The insurance is a canard, as Uber insures their drivers for more than the cab companies (the problem with Uber is what happens when you don't have a paying rider). And criminal background checks are useless if you haven't been in the country very long; how are they going to check your background in Pakistan? Also, the Uber/Lyft reputation systems are far more valuable anyway, plus Uber/Lyft keep detailed records of all their drivers' movements when they have riders, so it's pretty hard for them to get away with anything; cabs aren't guaranteed to have any of that oversight. And apparently driving for Uber isn't that bad, since the cab companies are now complaining that all the good drivers are switching to Uber/Lyft, leaving them with crappy drivers who earn them huge lawsuits for accidents they cause.

Grishnakh 11y ago
Wow, this is weird, I'm being modded way up. I was expecting the reverse: on another, much older "tech news" site, any time the Uber/Lyft vs. cabs debate comes up, there's a very strong contingent of people there who absolutely hate Uber/Lyft and go on and on about how wonderful cabs are.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  The Ars Technica readership seem to loathe Uber.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Actually, I was talking about Slashdot.
    - criddell 11y ago
      I'm not sure I would call Slashdot a tech news site anymore. They seem to loathe tech.
  - cryptoz 11y ago
    To be fair, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Uber: they are cheaters with no ethics [1], the executives are blatantly misogynistic [2], they consider rape a cost of doing business, as they consider that rapid expansion to India was more important than doing background checks on drivers [3], and of course I could go on, but I'll leave it there. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests-lyft http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-re... [2] http://mic.com/articles/104524/if-you-care-about-women-delete-your-uber-account#.1912xTqQj http://mic.com/articles/104524/if-you-care-about-women-delet... [3] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d229801e-7707-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d229801e-7707-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c...
    - magicalist 11y ago
      > they consider rape a cost of doing business, as they consider that rapid expansion to India was more important than doing background checks on drivers[3] I didn't follow that case closely, but according to that article that's a pretty gross mischaracterization of what happened, since the driver had "evaded Uber’s earlier security checks by providing a fake police reference letter." You also imply a pretty explicit calculus ("well, some rapes will happen, but it's worth it") that I doubt occurred except in the sense that any taxi company would have to consider. But maybe there's a better source? edit: not to take away from your other points. I've had extremely mixed feelings about uber due to those incidents and others, balanced by how completely awful cab companies tend to be and uber's genuine good points.
      - cryptoz 11y ago
        Perhaps this one: http://time.com/3693737/uber-new-delhi-india-rape-case/ http://time.com/3693737/uber-new-delhi-india-rape-case/ > The new screening process will include requiring address verification, a local criminal court search and a national criminal database search makes it sound like their previous background check did not include, "has this driver been convicted of sexual assault before?" This particular driver had indeed been previously found guilty of sexual assault, and Uber hired him without caring about that.
- icebraining 11y ago
  HN is not just a tech news site, it's the Silicon Valley startup community's tech news site. There's a large selection effect at play.
daeatenone 11y ago
The one thing that cabs do have going for them is no surge pricing. During peak weekend hours where surge pricing is 2x+ on both Uber and Lyft, cab fares stay the same. That's the only time I find myself taking a cab.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  The downside to that, which I've read many people complain about, is that during those peak times, you simply can't get a cab. With a constrained supply and fixed pricing, demand outstrips supply and then you may or may not be lucky enough to get a ride. That's the whole reason they have surge pricing: to get more drivers out during those times to handle the load. Cab drivers have little incentive to bother driving during peak hours since they get paid the same.
  - grobbles 11y ago
    That's the whole reason they have surge pricing: to get more drivers out during those times to handle the load. As with all such systems, it is eminently gamed by the participants. Uber drivers intentionally stay offline in the driver app, wait until surge areas appear on the rider app, race to the surge area and the logs into the driver app. While it is responding to a "shortage", it's an entirely artificial shortage not unlike the Enron debacle in California. Consider the recent case of the guy in Edmonton with the one hour, $1100 ride. Would anyone seriously argue that only one driver was willing to provide such a ride for $1100? How about for $500? $250? (Add that Alberta current has a serious employment issue as well) Any arguments about supply/demand are rendering absurd by that simple example. (by default my posts are dead so this is for the edification of the showdead few)
  - tzs 11y ago
    > Cab drivers have little incentive to bother driving during peak hours since they get paid the same. Won't a cab driver make more during peak hours because he will have less down time between fares?
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
mayank 11y ago
> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Funny story: for a while in SF, the taxi union (?) was running ads that were thinly veiled attacks on Uber/Lyft. One of them showed a smiling taxi driver with the caption "would you rather have a driver who knows the city by heart or by GPS?" I found it particularly hilarious because the answer, for me at least, is GPS with live traffic information. Just another example of how out of touch the taxi companies are.
- RickS 11y ago
  I can appreciate both sides of this. There are lots of times that uber's maps will ignore an alley that would prevent having to circle the block, or will try to send a driver on the highway for one exit when going between 4th and 9th, which is a horrible idea. There's a particular brand of driving that feels like "Only barely keeping it together because of the GPS" that's a little uncomfortable. A confident driver with some slick shortcuts can be a really fun experience.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    You can probably buy GPS data for travel between any two given locations that will indicate the most popular routes and how long they took - from cellphone companies, Google and the like? Do driver routing companies (deliveries, taxis and such) do this to discover implied optimal routes?
    - acdha 11y ago
      In theory this is possible. In practice, it's clearly not commonly done as Apple, Google, etc. will merrily send you into notorious traffic jams, unprotected turns against heavy traffic, etc. even in major cities will millions of users. It seems like Google might be getting slightly better now that they're pulling in Waze but I have seen little reason to believe that this is at all widespread.
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  I have had a SF cab driver input the wrong address in GPS and start driving the entirely wrong direction, so it is pretty good to have a driver that knows the city. Hilariously though, this clueless driver wasn't a Uber/Lyft driver, but a traditional taxi cab driver!
sandworm101 11y ago
>> And criminal background checks are useless if you haven't been in the country very long; how are they going to check your background in Pakistan? Recent immigrants have been through the US boarder enforcement regime. It isn't perfect, but it is something more than the average american goes through. So it is incorrect to say that being a recent immigrant renders any background check pointless. Remember that is the US with the reputation for difficulties re background checks. Getting a definitive answer as to someone's convictions in 50+ different jurisdictions that make up the US is far more complicated than from a unified justice system as found in Pakistan, Canada or India. And given some of the gibberish I've seen from US agents, their english is far more comprehensible.
amyjess 11y ago
Sadly, a lot of terrible cab drivers are moving over to Uber and Lyft now, and they're bringing with them the bad attitudes that drove people away from cabs. I'm a frequent Lyft rider. One of my worst experiences recently was with a guy who spoke extremely broken English and who could barely understand English either. This wouldn't be so bad, but Apple Maps told him my house was someplace it wasn't (I didn't realize this was Apple Maps fucking up at the time; I've since begun texting drivers coming to my house telling them to not use Apple Maps), so I had to call him on the phone. It took a solid five minutes for him to understand that he's in the wrong location and needs to drive a few more blocks to find me, and he refused to exit his nav and look where I dropped the pin (I always take extra care to put the pin in the right spot). It took so long because his English was word salad, and he didn't understand basic words like "keep driving forward". Then, when he got to my place, I went to sit in the front (which I always do, and Lyft encourages), and as soon as I opened the door, he shouted at me "HEY, I'M UP HERE! GET IN BACK!" (the most coherent thing he said to me the whole time). Fortunately, the ride wasn't too far, so I just endured it and one-starred him when I got to my destination. His rating was already at 4.5, which is below Lyft's termination threshold; I probably should've cancelled as soon as I saw it. Hopefully the one star I gave him was enough to get him kicked off the platform. I've also had other bad experiences from drivers who act like their job is to milk their passengers: - One guy also demanded I ride in the back. When I got in, I saw why: the inside door panels and the backs of the front seats were covered in advertising for his private driver service. If I knew then that was against the TOS, I would've had a nice chat with Trust & Safety. - A driver took the wrong turn and got into an express toll lane on the freeway. Because of that, he missed the exit and we had to go on a long detour. He started ranting, saying "I'm trying trying to run a business here but people keep hitting me with all these tolls!". Also, this was another guy who made me ride in the back. Yeah, there's a pattern with these people. Because of that, making me ride in the back is now a guarantee you'll never get more than three stars from me (3-star or less means you're never matched with me again). - A superstitious guy who refused to trust the voice nav... so to verify that the directions will indeed get us there, he started thumbing through the turn-by-turn directions with his face buried in the phone so he can't see the road, driving 20mph on the service road of a freeway. After the third time I told him to trust the nav and that I've taken Lyft from this place to that place dozens of times before, and he refused, I had him cancel the ride and let me out. I complained to Lyft and got my money back (because he charged me for the ride). - Drivers, plural, who report that they've arrived before they actually get here. Dude, I can see your car coming down the street in the distance. You're not here yet. - Driver who, on the way, pulled over at a gas station and texted me demanding I send him my destination address. When I told him I already entered it into the system, he cancelled the ride. My guess is he was going to cancel if the destination wasn't far enough away or maybe he was trying to redline me (the system only shows destination addresses once the driver reports they've arrived). Nothing of value was lost. - Drivers who insist on parking a couple of blocks from my office building and then demanding I walk to their car instead of them driving up to my building. I'm not even on a busy city street... I work in the burbs! Also, the path from my office building to their car is always unlit, and it mostly happens when it's dark out. Sorry, but I'm a woman... I'm not walking through an unlit area at night to meet a driver who's exhibiting sketchy behavior. I'll just cancel and eat the fee. Bonus points to the guy who told me that I need to look at the Lyft map and walk to where his car is. He was laughing when he said it, too. Not my first bad experience with him: I cancelled on him once before after he was rude to me on the phone (and he has a very unique name I remembered). Since then, if I see his name come up, I immediately cancel. Guy is seriously creepy. He's not the only one who does this: maybe 5% of drivers who pick me up from work pull this, and they're all creepy guys who you can tell used to be cab drivers. - One time I did walk the block or two over to the guy in a scenario like the above (one of the few times a driver pulled this when it was light out), he started ranting at me about how I kept him waiting for three minutes. When I said "I was expecting you to arrive where I actually was", he told me to get out of his car. As I was getting out, I told him I was complaining about him to Lyft, he said "I don't care, I work for myself", and then I walked back to my office building. As I was about to request a new ride, he drives over to me and physically chases me into the building. Luckily, I got in the elevator before he could. My boss called the police, they made sure he left (according to the police, he wanted to make sure I wouldn't do anything to hurt his reputation), and I then had a nice long chat with Trust & Safety. There's a common thread here: people who think that they run private driver businesses and claim to just use Lyft as a tool are always the worst drivers. Actually, 90% of drivers I deal with are perfectly pleasant. I just ride Lyft a lot, so I meet more drivers than the average person, and these experiences stick out in my mind.
mempko 11y ago
I used to fly to SF from Chicago often. I was surprised by how poor the quality of the taxi's were in SF vs Chicago. I understood then why Uber started there. My taxi experiences in Chicago were far better than SF and I suspect a company like Uber would not have started in Chicago precisely because the cabs are better here. Also of course public transportation.
- preds 11y ago
  I had exactly the same experience coming to SF from NYC. I took taxis in NYC every once in a while, the only bad experience was on new years eve where everybody turns their lights off and operates without the meter. After moving to SF I had such poor experiences with taxis that when I raised it with a friend they exclaimed oh, nobody uses taxis here they're awful - use uber (I now use Lyft regularly). Some of those experiences include: - very obviously driving me around the block after I asked to be dropped off at a particular location. The driver refused to let me out when I asked - driver refused to drive me with a "I don't want to go that way" - two drivers claimed their card machines didn't work and insisted on cash, the second tried it even after I asked before the ride if paying by card was okay
karmacondon 11y ago
I've never had any of these experiences when riding in cabs. The cars were always ok, the drivers were polite and well spoken, they took direct routes and never demanded cash. I use Uber for one simple reason: It's 30% cheaper than a cab. It isn't the quality of the cars, the personality of the drivers or the nature of the service. All of those things vary from case to case for every transportation service. Uber's only compelling feature is their lower price. From what I understand, the average Uber driver makes very little money, < $9/hr after Uber's fees and vehicle maintenance costs. And the low customer prices are effectively being subsidized by venture capital money. How long can this last? Could this be another Groupon situation, where the Ponzi scheme doesn't fall apart until after Uber's IPO?
- rayiner 11y ago
  Uber is sometimes more convenient and sometimes not. Downtown Chicago, NYC, or DC, it's more convenient hail the cab already driving by you. In the burbs Uber is more convenient. From Union Station in DC I take Uber, even though the cab line is way more convenient. It's about 40% cheaper accounting for no tip. Silicom Valley subsidizes my morning commute!
  - godzillabrennus 11y ago
    Disagree about that in Chicago. Can companies often claim their meters are down or go the "long way" to jack up the fare. Uber and Lyft have justly eaten up the market here.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      How do you "go the long way" in a city with a strict street grid?
      - ceras 11y ago
        Blatantly, hoping that the riders aren't paying attention. I took an Uber in NYC that tried this: while driving toward my location that was only 5 more blocks away on the same street, he turned right, then left, then left, then right (back onto the original street). He only did the first left turn after going off-course because I demanded it--I'm sure he would've taken his sweet time if I hadn't. To balance the anecdotes: I once took a yellow cab to an NYC airport, and in the middle of the highway (didn't even pull off to a shoulder) the cab driver stopped his car because his English wasn't good enough to read the signs. He just kept asking me "left? right?" as cars blew past him at 45+ mph, honking their horns. I wish yellow cabs had a rating system so I could've given that driver 1-star like I did the Uber driver.
saurik 11y ago
> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Haven't they heard of Google Maps and Waze and GPS? If I get into a cab, the driver asks where I am going, and I stump them by naming a major hotel, I personally feel like that was a frustrating failure, as now we are stuck in an intersection while I try to teach them the layout of a city I know less about than they do: the reason I am hiring a cab driver in the first place is because I want to outsource transportation, and the power that comes from being able to a street hail a cab to anywhere I want to go is tremendously useful. The way I would describe the benefit is that "if I am using a cab it is generally because I don't know where I am or where I need to be". Imagine if you went to a restaurant, ordered a sandwich, and the waiter was like "ok, I can make that, but can you tell me what goes in it?" or hire a consultant to build some software for you and they say "ok, I can type that, but how do I build this?". The real problem in San Francisco is that it was impossible to street hail. Your best strategy was typically to go to a nearby hotel and tip the valet to flag you a cab. Even then you were effectively screwed. And the dispatch at every cab company I have ever dealt with (except for Radio Cab in Portland) is a mess, and often they just lose track of fares. What Uber and Lyft provided is just software that they could have sold to the cab companies to replace their dispatch, which would have solved these problems and worked in the existing ecosystem, but they wanted to take over the world and vertically integrate. I can see why, even if it frustrates me that we live in a world where that is even possible, as I do not see them as net forces for good :/.
- stickfigure 11y ago
  but they wanted to take over the world and vertically integrate You make this sound like there was a choice. Taxi companies are monopolistic entrenched bureaucracies. "Pay us money, run our software, and totally change the way your business operates" is just not going to happen.
- lizzard 11y ago
  I used to have to try to get cabs an hour or more before going to a doctors' appointment. Cabs would just not show up and I'd have to call the dispatcher over and over. Dispatchers would tell me straight out that they wouldn't send a cab into Bayview (where I got physical therapy). To hail a cab on the street, I would have to ask strangers to do it for me while I acted like it wasn't for me (or else cabs would assume I couldn't fold my wheelchair to fit it in, or manage getting into the cab myself) So from my perspective the Uber/Lyft model has been life changing.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
I took an Uber just yesterday where the guy showed up way after the estimated time, in a junky car, didn't speak English, and couldn't even follow the maps prompts that were coming out of his phone in Chinese. The only difference is on Uber I can give that guy feedback, whereas with cab drivers that's a tedious bureaucratic process that nobody pursues.
alanh 11y ago
The “more rigorous criminal checks” part made me laugh. (And the next thought in the article, which is: These “strengths” are real, but the stupid public is slow to realize them!) Ha! Before Uber, I took a lengthy (probably $40) cab ride (with a stop in the middle to pick up a friend) in San Francisco. Now, I stupidly left my iPhone in the back seat, somehow. However, I immediately realized this upon exiting, and immediately used my friend’s phone to call Yellow Cab with the cab number of the taxi I just exited to request they send the driver back. They said they would “try.” They failed, despite my follow-up calls and pleas. (And the driver could not have gotten far, as this was in a less dense area of SF.) A day or two later, I made the trek to the Yellow Cab offices in SF (which took time, Muni + a good walk). I then spent a long time waiting to be seen, only to be told that Yellow was “just a co-operative” that wasn’t liable; and, infuriatingly, they refused to give me the identity of the driver in question. I had wanted to file a police report naming the driver. I never got my phone back — or an ounce of justice. This is not a rare or freak incident, as anyone who has ridden taxis enough times can attest. I lost another pricey personal item three years earlier in an Austin cab, and was similarly left without recourse when the driver failed to acknowledge requests for its return. It’s obvious the accountability that drivers have in any ride-sharing platform far outweigh the supposed criminal checks done by slimeball companies like Yellow Cab. If that same driver tried shit like that on Uber, not only would his rating drop, but he himself would be dropped because Uber itself would actually give a s--t when a customer reported this sort of incident! (And they wouldn't have to hike over to Uber HQ to do so!)
grillvogel 11y ago
>Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Haven't they heard of Google Maps and Waze and GPS? I take it you don't actually live in a city
billiam 11y ago
Dude, you clearly know nothing about this company. Do you even live in SF? I haven't been in anything except a new or near-new Yellow Cab in years, and yes, they know how to use Google Maps.
neutronicus 11y ago
> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Me. Being stuck with a clueless uber driver when the GPS is misfiring for whatever reason is the worst.
tizzdogg 11y ago
Every time I've taken an Uber in San Francisco I've ended up having to tell the driver how to get where I was going. Their GPS consistently tells them to take routes that technically work but are not the most efficient. For example, they always want to take California Street or Geary (stoplights at every intersection) instead of Bush/Pine (one way and with timed lights). As a native San Franciscan driving in the city for 20 years I know these are better routes. Most of the drivers I've had seem to not live in the city. I even had one driver who was in town for the week from LA and had never been to SF before. Of course it's just a problem with the GPS algorithms, but that sort of hyper-local knowledge seems to be really hard to encode in algorithms. I wonder how many GPS systems could pass "the knowledge" in london for example? I think we on HN tend to have too much faith in the superiority of software.

Grishnakh 11y ago

Wow, this is weird, I'm being modded way up. I was expecting the reverse: on another, much older "tech news" site, any time the Uber/Lyft vs. cabs debate comes up, there's a very strong contingent of people there who absolutely hate Uber/Lyft and go on and on about how wonderful cabs are.

santaclaus 11y ago
The Ars Technica readership seem to loathe Uber.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Actually, I was talking about Slashdot.
  - criddell 11y ago
    I'm not sure I would call Slashdot a tech news site anymore. They seem to loathe tech.
- cryptoz 11y ago
  To be fair, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Uber: they are cheaters with no ethics [1], the executives are blatantly misogynistic [2], they consider rape a cost of doing business, as they consider that rapid expansion to India was more important than doing background checks on drivers [3], and of course I could go on, but I'll leave it there. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests-lyft http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-re... [2] http://mic.com/articles/104524/if-you-care-about-women-delete-your-uber-account#.1912xTqQj http://mic.com/articles/104524/if-you-care-about-women-delet... [3] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d229801e-7707-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d229801e-7707-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c...
  - magicalist 11y ago
    > they consider rape a cost of doing business, as they consider that rapid expansion to India was more important than doing background checks on drivers[3] I didn't follow that case closely, but according to that article that's a pretty gross mischaracterization of what happened, since the driver had "evaded Uber’s earlier security checks by providing a fake police reference letter." You also imply a pretty explicit calculus ("well, some rapes will happen, but it's worth it") that I doubt occurred except in the sense that any taxi company would have to consider. But maybe there's a better source? edit: not to take away from your other points. I've had extremely mixed feelings about uber due to those incidents and others, balanced by how completely awful cab companies tend to be and uber's genuine good points.
    - cryptoz 11y ago
      Perhaps this one: http://time.com/3693737/uber-new-delhi-india-rape-case/ http://time.com/3693737/uber-new-delhi-india-rape-case/ > The new screening process will include requiring address verification, a local criminal court search and a national criminal database search makes it sound like their previous background check did not include, "has this driver been convicted of sexual assault before?" This particular driver had indeed been previously found guilty of sexual assault, and Uber hired him without caring about that.
icebraining 11y ago
HN is not just a tech news site, it's the Silicon Valley startup community's tech news site. There's a large selection effect at play.

daeatenone 11y ago

The one thing that cabs do have going for them is no surge pricing. During peak weekend hours where surge pricing is 2x+ on both Uber and Lyft, cab fares stay the same. That's the only time I find myself taking a cab.

Grishnakh 11y ago
The downside to that, which I've read many people complain about, is that during those peak times, you simply can't get a cab. With a constrained supply and fixed pricing, demand outstrips supply and then you may or may not be lucky enough to get a ride. That's the whole reason they have surge pricing: to get more drivers out during those times to handle the load. Cab drivers have little incentive to bother driving during peak hours since they get paid the same.
- grobbles 11y ago
  That's the whole reason they have surge pricing: to get more drivers out during those times to handle the load. As with all such systems, it is eminently gamed by the participants. Uber drivers intentionally stay offline in the driver app, wait until surge areas appear on the rider app, race to the surge area and the logs into the driver app. While it is responding to a "shortage", it's an entirely artificial shortage not unlike the Enron debacle in California. Consider the recent case of the guy in Edmonton with the one hour, $1100 ride. Would anyone seriously argue that only one driver was willing to provide such a ride for $1100? How about for $500? $250? (Add that Alberta current has a serious employment issue as well) Any arguments about supply/demand are rendering absurd by that simple example. (by default my posts are dead so this is for the edification of the showdead few)
- tzs 11y ago
  > Cab drivers have little incentive to bother driving during peak hours since they get paid the same. Won't a cab driver make more during peak hours because he will have less down time between fares?
  - Grishnakh 11y ago

mayank 11y ago

> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Funny story: for a while in SF, the taxi union (?) was running ads that were thinly veiled attacks on Uber/Lyft. One of them showed a smiling taxi driver with the caption "would you rather have a driver who knows the city by heart or by GPS?" I found it particularly hilarious because the answer, for me at least, is GPS with live traffic information. Just another example of how out of touch the taxi companies are.

RickS 11y ago
I can appreciate both sides of this. There are lots of times that uber's maps will ignore an alley that would prevent having to circle the block, or will try to send a driver on the highway for one exit when going between 4th and 9th, which is a horrible idea. There's a particular brand of driving that feels like "Only barely keeping it together because of the GPS" that's a little uncomfortable. A confident driver with some slick shortcuts can be a really fun experience.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  You can probably buy GPS data for travel between any two given locations that will indicate the most popular routes and how long they took - from cellphone companies, Google and the like? Do driver routing companies (deliveries, taxis and such) do this to discover implied optimal routes?
  - acdha 11y ago
    In theory this is possible. In practice, it's clearly not commonly done as Apple, Google, etc. will merrily send you into notorious traffic jams, unprotected turns against heavy traffic, etc. even in major cities will millions of users. It seems like Google might be getting slightly better now that they're pulling in Waze but I have seen little reason to believe that this is at all widespread.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
I have had a SF cab driver input the wrong address in GPS and start driving the entirely wrong direction, so it is pretty good to have a driver that knows the city. Hilariously though, this clueless driver wasn't a Uber/Lyft driver, but a traditional taxi cab driver!

sandworm101 11y ago

>> And criminal background checks are useless if you haven't been in the country very long; how are they going to check your background in Pakistan? Recent immigrants have been through the US boarder enforcement regime. It isn't perfect, but it is something more than the average american goes through. So it is incorrect to say that being a recent immigrant renders any background check pointless. Remember that is the US with the reputation for difficulties re background checks. Getting a definitive answer as to someone's convictions in 50+ different jurisdictions that make up the US is far more complicated than from a unified justice system as found in Pakistan, Canada or India. And given some of the gibberish I've seen from US agents, their english is far more comprehensible.

amyjess 11y ago

Sadly, a lot of terrible cab drivers are moving over to Uber and Lyft now, and they're bringing with them the bad attitudes that drove people away from cabs. I'm a frequent Lyft rider. One of my worst experiences recently was with a guy who spoke extremely broken English and who could barely understand English either. This wouldn't be so bad, but Apple Maps told him my house was someplace it wasn't (I didn't realize this was Apple Maps fucking up at the time; I've since begun texting drivers coming to my house telling them to not use Apple Maps), so I had to call him on the phone. It took a solid five minutes for him to understand that he's in the wrong location and needs to drive a few more blocks to find me, and he refused to exit his nav and look where I dropped the pin (I always take extra care to put the pin in the right spot). It took so long because his English was word salad, and he didn't understand basic words like "keep driving forward". Then, when he got to my place, I went to sit in the front (which I always do, and Lyft encourages), and as soon as I opened the door, he shouted at me "HEY, I'M UP HERE! GET IN BACK!" (the most coherent thing he said to me the whole time). Fortunately, the ride wasn't too far, so I just endured it and one-starred him when I got to my destination. His rating was already at 4.5, which is below Lyft's termination threshold; I probably should've cancelled as soon as I saw it. Hopefully the one star I gave him was enough to get him kicked off the platform. I've also had other bad experiences from drivers who act like their job is to milk their passengers: - One guy also demanded I ride in the back. When I got in, I saw why: the inside door panels and the backs of the front seats were covered in advertising for his private driver service. If I knew then that was against the TOS, I would've had a nice chat with Trust & Safety. - A driver took the wrong turn and got into an express toll lane on the freeway. Because of that, he missed the exit and we had to go on a long detour. He started ranting, saying "I'm trying trying to run a business here but people keep hitting me with all these tolls!". Also, this was another guy who made me ride in the back. Yeah, there's a pattern with these people. Because of that, making me ride in the back is now a guarantee you'll never get more than three stars from me (3-star or less means you're never matched with me again). - A superstitious guy who refused to trust the voice nav... so to verify that the directions will indeed get us there, he started thumbing through the turn-by-turn directions with his face buried in the phone so he can't see the road, driving 20mph on the service road of a freeway. After the third time I told him to trust the nav and that I've taken Lyft from this place to that place dozens of times before, and he refused, I had him cancel the ride and let me out. I complained to Lyft and got my money back (because he charged me for the ride). - Drivers, plural, who report that they've arrived before they actually get here. Dude, I can see your car coming down the street in the distance. You're not here yet. - Driver who, on the way, pulled over at a gas station and texted me demanding I send him my destination address. When I told him I already entered it into the system, he cancelled the ride. My guess is he was going to cancel if the destination wasn't far enough away or maybe he was trying to redline me (the system only shows destination addresses once the driver reports they've arrived). Nothing of value was lost. - Drivers who insist on parking a couple of blocks from my office building and then demanding I walk to their car instead of them driving up to my building. I'm not even on a busy city street... I work in the burbs! Also, the path from my office building to their car is always unlit, and it mostly happens when it's dark out. Sorry, but I'm a woman... I'm not walking through an unlit area at night to meet a driver who's exhibiting sketchy behavior. I'll just cancel and eat the fee. Bonus points to the guy who told me that I need to look at the Lyft map and walk to where his car is. He was laughing when he said it, too. Not my first bad experience with him: I cancelled on him once before after he was rude to me on the phone (and he has a very unique name I remembered). Since then, if I see his name come up, I immediately cancel. Guy is seriously creepy. He's not the only one who does this: maybe 5% of drivers who pick me up from work pull this, and they're all creepy guys who you can tell used to be cab drivers. - One time I did walk the block or two over to the guy in a scenario like the above (one of the few times a driver pulled this when it was light out), he started ranting at me about how I kept him waiting for three minutes. When I said "I was expecting you to arrive where I actually was", he told me to get out of his car. As I was getting out, I told him I was complaining about him to Lyft, he said "I don't care, I work for myself", and then I walked back to my office building. As I was about to request a new ride, he drives over to me and physically chases me into the building. Luckily, I got in the elevator before he could. My boss called the police, they made sure he left (according to the police, he wanted to make sure I wouldn't do anything to hurt his reputation), and I then had a nice long chat with Trust & Safety. There's a common thread here: people who think that they run private driver businesses and claim to just use Lyft as a tool are always the worst drivers. Actually, 90% of drivers I deal with are perfectly pleasant. I just ride Lyft a lot, so I meet more drivers than the average person, and these experiences stick out in my mind.

mempko 11y ago

I used to fly to SF from Chicago often. I was surprised by how poor the quality of the taxi's were in SF vs Chicago. I understood then why Uber started there. My taxi experiences in Chicago were far better than SF and I suspect a company like Uber would not have started in Chicago precisely because the cabs are better here. Also of course public transportation.

preds 11y ago
I had exactly the same experience coming to SF from NYC. I took taxis in NYC every once in a while, the only bad experience was on new years eve where everybody turns their lights off and operates without the meter. After moving to SF I had such poor experiences with taxis that when I raised it with a friend they exclaimed oh, nobody uses taxis here they're awful - use uber (I now use Lyft regularly). Some of those experiences include: - very obviously driving me around the block after I asked to be dropped off at a particular location. The driver refused to let me out when I asked - driver refused to drive me with a "I don't want to go that way" - two drivers claimed their card machines didn't work and insisted on cash, the second tried it even after I asked before the ride if paying by card was okay

karmacondon 11y ago

I've never had any of these experiences when riding in cabs. The cars were always ok, the drivers were polite and well spoken, they took direct routes and never demanded cash. I use Uber for one simple reason: It's 30% cheaper than a cab. It isn't the quality of the cars, the personality of the drivers or the nature of the service. All of those things vary from case to case for every transportation service. Uber's only compelling feature is their lower price. From what I understand, the average Uber driver makes very little money, < $9/hr after Uber's fees and vehicle maintenance costs. And the low customer prices are effectively being subsidized by venture capital money. How long can this last? Could this be another Groupon situation, where the Ponzi scheme doesn't fall apart until after Uber's IPO?

rayiner 11y ago
Uber is sometimes more convenient and sometimes not. Downtown Chicago, NYC, or DC, it's more convenient hail the cab already driving by you. In the burbs Uber is more convenient. From Union Station in DC I take Uber, even though the cab line is way more convenient. It's about 40% cheaper accounting for no tip. Silicom Valley subsidizes my morning commute!
- godzillabrennus 11y ago
  Disagree about that in Chicago. Can companies often claim their meters are down or go the "long way" to jack up the fare. Uber and Lyft have justly eaten up the market here.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    How do you "go the long way" in a city with a strict street grid?
    - ceras 11y ago
      Blatantly, hoping that the riders aren't paying attention. I took an Uber in NYC that tried this: while driving toward my location that was only 5 more blocks away on the same street, he turned right, then left, then left, then right (back onto the original street). He only did the first left turn after going off-course because I demanded it--I'm sure he would've taken his sweet time if I hadn't. To balance the anecdotes: I once took a yellow cab to an NYC airport, and in the middle of the highway (didn't even pull off to a shoulder) the cab driver stopped his car because his English wasn't good enough to read the signs. He just kept asking me "left? right?" as cars blew past him at 45+ mph, honking their horns. I wish yellow cabs had a rating system so I could've given that driver 1-star like I did the Uber driver.

saurik 11y ago

> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Haven't they heard of Google Maps and Waze and GPS? If I get into a cab, the driver asks where I am going, and I stump them by naming a major hotel, I personally feel like that was a frustrating failure, as now we are stuck in an intersection while I try to teach them the layout of a city I know less about than they do: the reason I am hiring a cab driver in the first place is because I want to outsource transportation, and the power that comes from being able to a street hail a cab to anywhere I want to go is tremendously useful. The way I would describe the benefit is that "if I am using a cab it is generally because I don't know where I am or where I need to be". Imagine if you went to a restaurant, ordered a sandwich, and the waiter was like "ok, I can make that, but can you tell me what goes in it?" or hire a consultant to build some software for you and they say "ok, I can type that, but how do I build this?". The real problem in San Francisco is that it was impossible to street hail. Your best strategy was typically to go to a nearby hotel and tip the valet to flag you a cab. Even then you were effectively screwed. And the dispatch at every cab company I have ever dealt with (except for Radio Cab in Portland) is a mess, and often they just lose track of fares. What Uber and Lyft provided is just software that they could have sold to the cab companies to replace their dispatch, which would have solved these problems and worked in the existing ecosystem, but they wanted to take over the world and vertically integrate. I can see why, even if it frustrates me that we live in a world where that is even possible, as I do not see them as net forces for good :/.

stickfigure 11y ago
but they wanted to take over the world and vertically integrate You make this sound like there was a choice. Taxi companies are monopolistic entrenched bureaucracies. "Pay us money, run our software, and totally change the way your business operates" is just not going to happen.
lizzard 11y ago
I used to have to try to get cabs an hour or more before going to a doctors' appointment. Cabs would just not show up and I'd have to call the dispatcher over and over. Dispatchers would tell me straight out that they wouldn't send a cab into Bayview (where I got physical therapy). To hail a cab on the street, I would have to ask strangers to do it for me while I acted like it wasn't for me (or else cabs would assume I couldn't fold my wheelchair to fit it in, or manage getting into the cab myself) So from my perspective the Uber/Lyft model has been life changing.

thrownaway2424 11y ago

I took an Uber just yesterday where the guy showed up way after the estimated time, in a junky car, didn't speak English, and couldn't even follow the maps prompts that were coming out of his phone in Chinese. The only difference is on Uber I can give that guy feedback, whereas with cab drivers that's a tedious bureaucratic process that nobody pursues.

alanh 11y ago

The “more rigorous criminal checks” part made me laugh. (And the next thought in the article, which is: These “strengths” are real, but the stupid public is slow to realize them!) Ha! Before Uber, I took a lengthy (probably $40) cab ride (with a stop in the middle to pick up a friend) in San Francisco. Now, I stupidly left my iPhone in the back seat, somehow. However, I immediately realized this upon exiting, and immediately used my friend’s phone to call Yellow Cab with the cab number of the taxi I just exited to request they send the driver back. They said they would “try.” They failed, despite my follow-up calls and pleas. (And the driver could not have gotten far, as this was in a less dense area of SF.) A day or two later, I made the trek to the Yellow Cab offices in SF (which took time, Muni + a good walk). I then spent a long time waiting to be seen, only to be told that Yellow was “just a co-operative” that wasn’t liable; and, infuriatingly, they refused to give me the identity of the driver in question. I had wanted to file a police report naming the driver. I never got my phone back — or an ounce of justice. This is not a rare or freak incident, as anyone who has ridden taxis enough times can attest. I lost another pricey personal item three years earlier in an Austin cab, and was similarly left without recourse when the driver failed to acknowledge requests for its return. It’s obvious the accountability that drivers have in any ride-sharing platform far outweigh the supposed criminal checks done by slimeball companies like Yellow Cab. If that same driver tried shit like that on Uber, not only would his rating drop, but he himself would be dropped because Uber itself would actually give a s--t when a customer reported this sort of incident! (And they wouldn't have to hike over to Uber HQ to do so!)

grillvogel 11y ago

>Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Haven't they heard of Google Maps and Waze and GPS? I take it you don't actually live in a city

billiam 11y ago

Dude, you clearly know nothing about this company. Do you even live in SF? I haven't been in anything except a new or near-new Yellow Cab in years, and yes, they know how to use Google Maps.

neutronicus 11y ago

> Who cares about knowledge of city streets? Me. Being stuck with a clueless uber driver when the GPS is misfiring for whatever reason is the worst.

tizzdogg 11y ago

Every time I've taken an Uber in San Francisco I've ended up having to tell the driver how to get where I was going. Their GPS consistently tells them to take routes that technically work but are not the most efficient. For example, they always want to take California Street or Geary (stoplights at every intersection) instead of Bush/Pine (one way and with timed lights). As a native San Franciscan driving in the city for 20 years I know these are better routes. Most of the drivers I've had seem to not live in the city. I even had one driver who was in town for the week from LA and had never been to SF before. Of course it's just a problem with the GPS algorithms, but that sort of hyper-local knowledge seems to be really hard to encode in algorithms. I wonder how many GPS systems could pass "the knowledge" in london for example? I think we on HN tend to have too much faith in the superiority of software.