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> Taxi driver used to be one of the country’s most dangerous professions. Uber changed that. I'm not sure thats right. Taxi drivers used to be paid mainly in c
by denton-scratch 3y ago
> Taxi driver used to be one of the country’s most dangerous professions. Uber changed that.
I'm not sure thats right. Taxi drivers used to be paid mainly in cash, and a driver sitting on a pile of cash is a robbery target. Uber arrived shortly after ecommerce became pervasive; I've never taken an Uber ride, but I'm assuming that payment is nearly always electronic.
- lowkey_ 3y ago> I'm not sure thats right Doesn't your point support the quote? Taxi driving was dangerous because of cash and being a robbery target, and Uber changed that.
- mrWiz 3y agoIn my area taxis had credit card machines, but it was common for them to "not work" so the cabbie could fleece you for extra money driving you to an ATM on the way. And then they'd refuse to give change so you'd have to pay in $20 increments. Uber definitely disrupted that.
- nox100 3y agoUber didn't change that, electronic payment changed that.
- jjoonathan 3y agoThe electronic payment that was always "broken" unless you were comfortable enough with confrontation to call the taxi driver's bluff?
- JohnFen 3y agoI've never experienced a "broken" machine in a cab.
- jjoonathan 3y agoHow many big city taxis did you ride before 2013 or so? They cleaned up their act once they got competition.
- JohnFen 3y agoQuite a few, actually.
- jjoonathan 3y agoSame. Which area? For me it was Pittsburgh, New York, and Rome. The problem was absolutely endemic in all three, and I saw it pretty regularly at conferences and on vacations, too.
- canjobear 3y agoI encountered "broken" machines all the time before ~2010, probably more often than working machines, in major US cities.
- joe_the_user 3y agoWhen I drove taxi in the mid-2000s, payment was essentially always cash. The taxi companies were small operations that basically leveraged their connections to city government to get their positions. They resisted all modernizations because they cost money and because their monopoly guarantee them money from passengers no matter how shitty the service - and it was the drivers who made tip-money or not from service quality. So basically Uber, not general progress, was what changed things to electronic payments etc.
- visarga 3y agoElectronic payment is just a part of the improvements ushered in by Uber, there's also calling to location and driver reviews. Those are important too.
- jjoonathan 3y ago> there's also calling to location Before any wise guys come in here and claim that you could order cabs to a location by phone before uber, I would like to point out that they frequently failed to arrive and you had no way of knowing whether or not they would arrive until you gave up waiting for them, so while you could theoretically do this is was terribly unreliable and often a big mistake.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Taxi drivers used to be paid mainly in cash In the ancient days, sure. But at least in the areas I go to, cabs have been accepting payment by card a long time before Uber came around.
- sevagh 3y agoAround here (Montreal), cabs were miserable scammers and scumsuckers that would drive you to ATM machines in the middle of the night to coerce you to withdraw cash to pay them. I'm glad Uber fucked them to shreds. Now, of course, they're all polite and have credit card machines.
- knodi123 3y ago> payment is nearly always electronic. 100% always, but I've heard that cash tips are becoming common.