8 ms·
No insurance is a huge red flag to me
by philip1209 11y ago
No insurance is a huge red flag to me
- zymhan 11y agoExisting, old school carpool programs don't check to see if drivers have insurance, so how is this anything new?
- jellicle 11y agoExisting, old school carpool programs aren't paying their drivers, either. Which means it isn't commercial use. Which means your regular auto insurance covers it. Unlike this.
- pbreit 11y agoThe amounts seem purposely low so as to appear like non-commercial activity.
- thrwwyh 11y agoThey get around this by limiting the amount of payment to the drivers' costs (i.e. the IRS standard mileage rate of $0.54/mile.) From the TOS: "...we may charge you to reimburse the Carpool Driver for the costs associated with a Carpool Ride provided to you. [...] Reimbursements may include per mile charges at up to the prevailing IRS standard mileage rate, and other expenses like tolls and parking fees." (Emphasis mine)
- eli 11y agoThat's an interesting legal theory, but I wouldn't want to be the test case.
- prawn 11y agoIf they wanted/needed to pay a higher amount, could Lyft get around this by paying the driver two fees - a first constrained one to skirt the insurance rules and then a "separate" fee for another component such as advertising or data provision or something else plausible but arbitrary?
- vkou 11y agoIf it walks like a duck, smells like a duck, and quacks like a duck, a court is very likely to call it a duck.
- geofft 11y agoA 1992 email from Richard Stallman about libreadline's license is, oddly enough, relevant here: "The issue first arose when NeXT proposed to distribute a modified GCC in two parts and let the user link them. Jobs asked me whether this was lawful. It seemed to me at the time that it was, following reasoning like what you are using; but since the result was very undesirable for free software, I said I would have to ask the lawyer. "What the lawyer said surprised me; he said that judges would consider such schemes to be 'subterfuges' and would be very harsh toward them. He said a judge would ask whether it is 'really' one program, rather than how it is labeled. "So I went back to Jobs and said we believed his plan was not allowed by the GPL." Judges are not computers, and are generally capable of seeing through your clever plans.
- zymhan 11y agoI think it's debatable, legally, whether or not this constitutes commercial use. It's designed only for picking people up along a route you already drive regularly, and the monthly cap of $400 means no one could conceivably make a living off of it, even if they gamed it somehow and had multiple accounts.
- SilasX 11y agoPretty sure normal insurance covers giving rides so long as you don't profit -- that is, as long as your compensation is no more than the cost of giving the ride, at which point it would become commercial activity, with a different risk profile.
- jdmichal 11y agoInsurance and regulation arbitrage is basically the name of the game for Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb as far as I can tell.
- pbreit 11y agoThat sounds clever and informed but is mostly obnoxious.
- 1stop 11y agoAre you describing your own comment? That's very meta!
- jdmichal 11y agoI didn't mean to offend, but I apparently have. I truly believe what I said, so I would like to know how would you suggest I improve the comment?
- phil248 11y agoYou could improve your comment by acknowledging that most businesses cajole, skirt, finagle or ignore regulations when it suits their purpose and they think they can get away with it. Uber and AirBnB did not invent this game.
- username223 11y ago> Uber and AirBnB did not invent this game. True, but most businesses (outside finance) have other ways to make money besides cajoling, skirting, finagling or ignoring laws (or the latinate "regulations," as you prefer).
- repsilat 11y ago> or the latinate "regulations," as you prefer "Regulation" (at least in the US) is a broader category, covering both "laws" passed by elected lawmakers and "rules" made by unelected public servants.
- levemi 11y agoPeople shouldn't just worry about "no insurance" but also underinsurance. Minimal insurance in many areas is ridiculously too low. If you're signing up to do this as a driver you better #1 Tell your auto insurance company and #2 Up your insurance levels to the max (something you should probably do anyways if you can afford it). If you're signing up to do this as a rider, well I don't think you should given the insurance problems and you not having any guarantee that someone will be held liable if they cause an accident. Getting into a bad accident with an underinsured driver at fault is a life changing event.
- rconti 11y agoOr make sure you have health insurance.
- vkou 11y agoYour own health insurance is one thing - compared to it, your liability in the event of an accident is essentially unbounded.
- tomjen3 11y agoHow? I am not driving the car.
- rconti 11y agoYeah. Perhaps my comment was not clear. They made it sound like you were in grave danger if you merely rode in the car of someone with insufficient automotive insurance, to which my answer is "make sure you have health insurance." Actually, that's my answer to many things.
- codecamper 11y agoI suppose they can't offer insurance because the insurance company didn't know how to compute the price. In other words, because Lyft is doing something very different than what has happened for the previous 6 or so years, the insurance industry doesn't know how to react. Sounds like an opportunity to me.
- snotrockets 11y agoOh, you could find an underwriter for everything if you look enough. It's just that the premium might be very high.