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I disagree with your probability equation. The question I should ask is "does being a violent criminal make it more likely that an Uber driver will attack a pas
by URSpider94 10y ago
I disagree with your probability equation. The question I should ask is "does being a violent criminal make it more likely that an Uber driver will attack a passenger?" I'd bet good money that the answer is yes. Being alone in someone else's car, potentially late at night and far from home, puts you at an extreme disadvantage -- it's a very dangerous situation that you would ordinarily stay far away from, unless you had a good reason to believe that you would be safe.
I am not in general a fan of security theater, but I think that doing thorough background checks of for-hire drivers for relevant offenses such as moving violations, alcohol- or drug-related arrests and violent crimes is just smart.
- darawk 10y agoI think if that is the case and it proves to be a pervasive problem, the market will sort it out pretty cleanly. If Uber drivers assaulting people becomes sufficiently common that people are willing to pay more, someone will create a solution to this problem. This is something that the market should be able to solve extremely well on its own, without intervention from government. And there is no large correlated risk here or dearth of information for the public that should motivate the regulators to act.
- URSpider94 10y agoI'm familiar with that argument. However, we've clearly decided as a society that that's not the path we want to take. We decided that we want the government to protect us from some baseline of risks, so that we don't have to spend all our time on which transportation service has the highest risk of being murdered by your driver, or which restaurant has the lowest risk of infecting you with typhoid.
- darawk 10y agoYes, my point is that that baseline has swung too far towards protectionist interventionism.