8 ms·

Uber must pay wheelchair user $35,000, provide accessible rides

63 points by palidanx 3y ago

paulpauper 3y ago
So much for those attention-grabbing 7-8 figure settlements that sometimes make the news. The reality is much less money. $35k so tiny can be treated as a cost of doing business.
- jmspring 3y ago
  Given this was in Canada, I wonder if that was part of the reason the settlement was low.
- uberman22 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - adra 3y ago
    Auto-brail screen readers exist. If someone has the means or has a gov subsidy can read text on the internet Taxis to support wheelchair users don't, or at least done exist enough to subsist off the profit motives necessary to keep the service alive. So what is your point?
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      If someone had a government subsidy then they could use the money to pay the market price necessary to make such a service viable. If the government wants that subsidy, why should they impose that cost on a particular industry instead of paying for it out of the general fund?
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  That was the amount awarded to a single claimant. Living in this area I can promise you that there is more than one disabled person in the BC's largest city. Also they are required to begin providing acceptable service. So the business impact is much more severe than writing a check and forgetting about it. Canadian regulators are more than happy to shut down your whole business if you fail to comply with tribunal orders.
- abeppu 3y ago
  I wonder if there will now be a large number of similar suits from others that have been discriminated against in the same way. Maybe the eventual total liability could be meaningful?
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  Paying out 35k a ride on every 20 dollar canadian ride for a handicapped person is good business? You're losing money on every transaction. And no, you don't make it up in volume. You need to do 1750 other 20 dollar canadian rides just to make up for each handicapped ride. That's assuming you only want to break even, and you don't pay anything to your drivers. That's a horrible business.
- threadweaver34 3y ago
  In a strictly business sense, Uber made the right call. Paying $35,000 plus lawyers to learn this is a service they need to provide is cheaper than building it preemptively. In a human sense, it's pretty fucked.
kohbo 3y ago
"...Uber told the 2022 hearing into Bauer’s complaint that it didn’t violate the human rights code because it’s an app and doesn’t provide a service as defined under the code." What an argument.
- rchaud 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - seneca 3y ago
    > The libertarian dream: no employees, no equipment, no liability. Not a single one of those things are librarian values.
    - jakelazaroff 3y ago
      I mean, "no liability" definitely is.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        Not at all. If you injure someone you pay damages. That's a completely different thing than e.g. giving them the ability to sue you for not providing something you never promised to provide.
        noqc 3y ago
        Where do you draw the line between damages and externalities?
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        Externalities are damages. But that's not what these kinds of laws are trying to address. The market is willing to provide car service to people in wheelchairs, for a particular price. A lot of people in wheelchairs can't afford that price. The law is trying to create a subsidy. In principle the people who want the subsidy should be the ones paying for it. If you think subsidizing this is a good idea then you give your money to a charity, they use the money to subsidize the service, and then the market provides the service because somebody is paying for it. You can also decide you don't want to be a libertarian and instead you want the government to subsidize the service out of tax revenue. Libertarians don't like this, because now you're taking money from the people who didn't agree to subsidize it without their consent. But also, politicians don't like this, because it's spending tax money and they'd prefer to spend that on their cronies in some government-adjacent industry. So what politicians do instead is pass it as an unfunded mandate on whatever industry. This is still a tax, but now it's not a tax on e.g. rich people, it's a tax on other ride sharing customers and drivers. Who tend not to be rich people, because rich people have their own cars or private limousines or planes. Then we get a covert tax on the poor so that the overt tax money can go to defense contractors and other politically-connected corporations. It's at this point that you start to wonder if the libertarians might have been onto something.
thrill 3y ago
'Taxi companies “100 per cent support that Uber should also provide (wheelchair accessible vans) because why not?”' Because the drivers own the vehicles not Uber.
primer42 3y ago
> But Uber told the 2022 hearing into Bauer’s complaint that it didn’t violate the human rights code because it’s an app and doesn’t provide a service as defined under the code. What a slimy, disgusting, in-human argument to make.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Doesn't sound anything like that. It would be like if "Ask HN: Who's Hiring?" was asked why they didn't ensure that the hiring was evenly distributed among (say) races. They're just a forum, a place where people can post stuff. They can't guarantee that the people posting are of that distribution unless they themselves post it. In this case, Uber is just a forum where people post ride availability and people look for ride availability. It's not an outrageous argument to make, but it clearly didn't take. Presumably Uber will have to ensure there are sufficient UberWAV available in any region they offer normal services.
  - teachrdan 3y ago
    Uber enforces standards on drivers and cars to use their platform -- and take around 30% or more per ride. This is obviously completely different from HN's "Who's Hiring?" threads. https://therideshareguy.com/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make/ https://therideshareguy.com/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make/
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      Well, the standards can't be that important. If you post the r-word in your job listing you're not going to get listed. But the payment may do the trick.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        But then you have the opposite problem, don't you? Ford or Exxon is making a significant profit from the activity too. The former may even be imposing standards -- some modern cars have a limp-mode if they detect a fault -- and they had a lot to do with whether the vehicle is wheelchair-accessible.
teruakohatu 3y ago
Where I live there are few wheelchair taxis and they need to be booked in advance, sometimes months in advance if it’s a holiday. If a driver is sick most likely all their customers are staying at home. Costs are significantly subsidised and yet still there are not enough drivers. It is hard to scale because it requires drivers with well above average patience, empathy and a caring personality. It’s not a job for profit focused individuals. To scale it would require drivers paid a salary not paid per trip/mile. It would also require generous allowances for time (wheelchair taxi drivers are often delayed through no fault of their own).
- bombcar 3y ago
  We have a local state/city sponsored ride share program for elderly, infirm, disabled, and it can do wheelchairs. And it is still often simpler to just buy a (subsidized) wheelchair van for the person and let their caretaker drive them.
- mdorazio 3y ago
  It’s even worse. Wheelchair accessible vehicles are extremely expensive. As in, a basic wheelchair retrofit to a standard minivan adds over $30k of cost. And then the modifications to the vehicle prevent the cabin space from being used to the same level as before (you lose seats and cargo space). So it’s monetarily a bad proposition on many levels for taxi operators. The best way around it is to push vehicles like the Cruise Origin that come with wheelchair-ready space by default but then you’re into purpose built vehicles that have their own downsides.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    The Origin is also not currently in production and indefinitely delayed [0]. [0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45989501/gm-self-driving-cruise-origin-delayed/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45989501/gm-self-driving-...
  - morsch 3y ago
    > a basic wheelchair retrofit to a standard minivan adds over $30k of cost What's a basic retrofit? I just looked and I think a ramp etc is less than 5000 EUR in Germany, installed?
kevincox 3y ago
> B.C.’s attorney general was named as a respondent in the complaint and in its submission said that in early 2020 it implemented a 30-cent per-trip fee under the passenger transportation act or regulation as an incentive for ride-hailing apps to provide a wheelchair accessible ride option, not to exempt them from offering one. I think this is the interesting part. Uber was paying a fee per ride (previously $0.30, recently $0.90) which was supposed to go towards providing accessible transit options. This doesn't seem like an unreasonable way to ensure that there are accessible options while not requiring every provider to make those accommodations (which can be very expensive for smaller providers as in order to reliably offer accessible transit you need capable vesicles and always have them spread out over your operating range). It seems that raising/adjusing this fee and using the proceeds to subsidize accessible transit could be a quite efficient way to ensure that this service is available and self-balancing based on the market.
- advisedwang 3y ago
  As a matter of law though it's a terrible argument. the BC Human Rights code has a provision "If there is a conflict between this Code and any other enactment, this Code prevails." So unless the taxi fee explicitly says it supersedes the human rights code it explicitly does not.
  - kbelder 3y ago
    What if the other enactment has the same provision?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pests 3y ago
      Theres a temporal component, the later law needs to specify it overrules the earlier. The earlier law can't reference a law that doesn't exist.
    - advisedwang 3y ago
sevenf0ur 3y ago
Wow, each ride is taxed $0.90 to hopefully provide taxi companies with wheel chair accessible vehicles so they can perform rides at a loss? The city would be better off forming a non-profit and managing the rides like public transit.
- DANmode 3y ago
  That may not be ubiquitously true, from some of the anecdotes here about those very transport firms, and local taxi firm stories in general.
- bpye 3y ago
  TransLink, the local transit operator, do have a service not unlike that you describe called HandyDART. https://www.translink.ca/rider-guide/transit-accessibility/handydart https://www.translink.ca/rider-guide/transit-accessibility/h...
threadweaver34 3y ago
Uber gonna Uber, but I'm surprised someone in management doesn't realize this is a bad look, read the tea leaves, and buy a few wheelchair taxis and have Uber-employed drivers to handle this in cities with over 100,000 people.
- linehedonist 3y ago
  Cost is way too high. A few taxis and drivers won’t cut it.
SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
The longer you look at it the more interesting the issue is. The fee Uber has been paying and the assertion that it doesn't protect a company from legal liability. The fact that what initially seems like a horrid and ridiculous argument ("we're an app!") actually unpacks to something consequential. The fact that Uber's model ostensibly relies on personal cars being used (so who's responsible for the lack of accessible cars?).
webnrrd2k 3y ago
I'd think that Uber would just hire the wheelchair accessible taxis directly from the taxi company. Maybe the taxi company charged 3x or more for the ride, but it's still cheaper for Uber.
- DANmode 3y ago
  In the long-run, sure, but think about how many more cents the investors made by ignoring the issue the last two+ quarters! /s

63 points by palidanx 3y ago

So much for those attention-grabbing 7-8 figure settlements that sometimes make the news. The reality is much less money. $35k so tiny can be treated as a cost of doing business.

jmspring 3y ago
Given this was in Canada, I wonder if that was part of the reason the settlement was low.
uberman22 3y ago
[flagged]
- adra 3y ago
  Auto-brail screen readers exist. If someone has the means or has a gov subsidy can read text on the internet Taxis to support wheelchair users don't, or at least done exist enough to subsist off the profit motives necessary to keep the service alive. So what is your point?
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    If someone had a government subsidy then they could use the money to pay the market price necessary to make such a service viable. If the government wants that subsidy, why should they impose that cost on a particular industry instead of paying for it out of the general fund?
dghlsakjg 3y ago
That was the amount awarded to a single claimant. Living in this area I can promise you that there is more than one disabled person in the BC's largest city. Also they are required to begin providing acceptable service. So the business impact is much more severe than writing a check and forgetting about it. Canadian regulators are more than happy to shut down your whole business if you fail to comply with tribunal orders.
abeppu 3y ago
I wonder if there will now be a large number of similar suits from others that have been discriminated against in the same way. Maybe the eventual total liability could be meaningful?
bilbo0s 3y ago
Paying out 35k a ride on every 20 dollar canadian ride for a handicapped person is good business? You're losing money on every transaction. And no, you don't make it up in volume. You need to do 1750 other 20 dollar canadian rides just to make up for each handicapped ride. That's assuming you only want to break even, and you don't pay anything to your drivers. That's a horrible business.
threadweaver34 3y ago
In a strictly business sense, Uber made the right call. Paying $35,000 plus lawyers to learn this is a service they need to provide is cheaper than building it preemptively. In a human sense, it's pretty fucked.

kohbo 3y ago

"...Uber told the 2022 hearing into Bauer’s complaint that it didn’t violate the human rights code because it’s an app and doesn’t provide a service as defined under the code." What an argument.

rchaud 3y ago
[flagged]
- seneca 3y ago
  > The libertarian dream: no employees, no equipment, no liability. Not a single one of those things are librarian values.
  - jakelazaroff 3y ago
    I mean, "no liability" definitely is.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Not at all. If you injure someone you pay damages. That's a completely different thing than e.g. giving them the ability to sue you for not providing something you never promised to provide.
      - noqc 3y ago
        Where do you draw the line between damages and externalities?
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        Externalities are damages. But that's not what these kinds of laws are trying to address. The market is willing to provide car service to people in wheelchairs, for a particular price. A lot of people in wheelchairs can't afford that price. The law is trying to create a subsidy. In principle the people who want the subsidy should be the ones paying for it. If you think subsidizing this is a good idea then you give your money to a charity, they use the money to subsidize the service, and then the market provides the service because somebody is paying for it. You can also decide you don't want to be a libertarian and instead you want the government to subsidize the service out of tax revenue. Libertarians don't like this, because now you're taking money from the people who didn't agree to subsidize it without their consent. But also, politicians don't like this, because it's spending tax money and they'd prefer to spend that on their cronies in some government-adjacent industry. So what politicians do instead is pass it as an unfunded mandate on whatever industry. This is still a tax, but now it's not a tax on e.g. rich people, it's a tax on other ride sharing customers and drivers. Who tend not to be rich people, because rich people have their own cars or private limousines or planes. Then we get a covert tax on the poor so that the overt tax money can go to defense contractors and other politically-connected corporations. It's at this point that you start to wonder if the libertarians might have been onto something.

thrill 3y ago

'Taxi companies “100 per cent support that Uber should also provide (wheelchair accessible vans) because why not?”' Because the drivers own the vehicles not Uber.

primer42 3y ago

> But Uber told the 2022 hearing into Bauer’s complaint that it didn’t violate the human rights code because it’s an app and doesn’t provide a service as defined under the code. What a slimy, disgusting, in-human argument to make.

renewiltord 3y ago
Doesn't sound anything like that. It would be like if "Ask HN: Who's Hiring?" was asked why they didn't ensure that the hiring was evenly distributed among (say) races. They're just a forum, a place where people can post stuff. They can't guarantee that the people posting are of that distribution unless they themselves post it. In this case, Uber is just a forum where people post ride availability and people look for ride availability. It's not an outrageous argument to make, but it clearly didn't take. Presumably Uber will have to ensure there are sufficient UberWAV available in any region they offer normal services.
- teachrdan 3y ago
  Uber enforces standards on drivers and cars to use their platform -- and take around 30% or more per ride. This is obviously completely different from HN's "Who's Hiring?" threads. https://therideshareguy.com/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make/ https://therideshareguy.com/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make/
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Well, the standards can't be that important. If you post the r-word in your job listing you're not going to get listed. But the payment may do the trick.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      But then you have the opposite problem, don't you? Ford or Exxon is making a significant profit from the activity too. The former may even be imposing standards -- some modern cars have a limp-mode if they detect a fault -- and they had a lot to do with whether the vehicle is wheelchair-accessible.

teruakohatu 3y ago

Where I live there are few wheelchair taxis and they need to be booked in advance, sometimes months in advance if it’s a holiday. If a driver is sick most likely all their customers are staying at home. Costs are significantly subsidised and yet still there are not enough drivers. It is hard to scale because it requires drivers with well above average patience, empathy and a caring personality. It’s not a job for profit focused individuals. To scale it would require drivers paid a salary not paid per trip/mile. It would also require generous allowances for time (wheelchair taxi drivers are often delayed through no fault of their own).

bombcar 3y ago
We have a local state/city sponsored ride share program for elderly, infirm, disabled, and it can do wheelchairs. And it is still often simpler to just buy a (subsidized) wheelchair van for the person and let their caretaker drive them.
mdorazio 3y ago
It’s even worse. Wheelchair accessible vehicles are extremely expensive. As in, a basic wheelchair retrofit to a standard minivan adds over $30k of cost. And then the modifications to the vehicle prevent the cabin space from being used to the same level as before (you lose seats and cargo space). So it’s monetarily a bad proposition on many levels for taxi operators. The best way around it is to push vehicles like the Cruise Origin that come with wheelchair-ready space by default but then you’re into purpose built vehicles that have their own downsides.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  The Origin is also not currently in production and indefinitely delayed [0]. [0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45989501/gm-self-driving-cruise-origin-delayed/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45989501/gm-self-driving-...
- morsch 3y ago
  > a basic wheelchair retrofit to a standard minivan adds over $30k of cost What's a basic retrofit? I just looked and I think a ramp etc is less than 5000 EUR in Germany, installed?

kevincox 3y ago

> B.C.’s attorney general was named as a respondent in the complaint and in its submission said that in early 2020 it implemented a 30-cent per-trip fee under the passenger transportation act or regulation as an incentive for ride-hailing apps to provide a wheelchair accessible ride option, not to exempt them from offering one. I think this is the interesting part. Uber was paying a fee per ride (previously $0.30, recently $0.90) which was supposed to go towards providing accessible transit options. This doesn't seem like an unreasonable way to ensure that there are accessible options while not requiring every provider to make those accommodations (which can be very expensive for smaller providers as in order to reliably offer accessible transit you need capable vesicles and always have them spread out over your operating range). It seems that raising/adjusing this fee and using the proceeds to subsidize accessible transit could be a quite efficient way to ensure that this service is available and self-balancing based on the market.

advisedwang 3y ago
As a matter of law though it's a terrible argument. the BC Human Rights code has a provision "If there is a conflict between this Code and any other enactment, this Code prevails." So unless the taxi fee explicitly says it supersedes the human rights code it explicitly does not.
- kbelder 3y ago
  What if the other enactment has the same provision?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pests 3y ago
    Theres a temporal component, the later law needs to specify it overrules the earlier. The earlier law can't reference a law that doesn't exist.
  - advisedwang 3y ago

sevenf0ur 3y ago

Wow, each ride is taxed $0.90 to hopefully provide taxi companies with wheel chair accessible vehicles so they can perform rides at a loss? The city would be better off forming a non-profit and managing the rides like public transit.

DANmode 3y ago
That may not be ubiquitously true, from some of the anecdotes here about those very transport firms, and local taxi firm stories in general.
bpye 3y ago
TransLink, the local transit operator, do have a service not unlike that you describe called HandyDART. https://www.translink.ca/rider-guide/transit-accessibility/handydart https://www.translink.ca/rider-guide/transit-accessibility/h...

threadweaver34 3y ago

Uber gonna Uber, but I'm surprised someone in management doesn't realize this is a bad look, read the tea leaves, and buy a few wheelchair taxis and have Uber-employed drivers to handle this in cities with over 100,000 people.

linehedonist 3y ago
Cost is way too high. A few taxis and drivers won’t cut it.

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago

The longer you look at it the more interesting the issue is. The fee Uber has been paying and the assertion that it doesn't protect a company from legal liability. The fact that what initially seems like a horrid and ridiculous argument ("we're an app!") actually unpacks to something consequential. The fact that Uber's model ostensibly relies on personal cars being used (so who's responsible for the lack of accessible cars?).

webnrrd2k 3y ago

I'd think that Uber would just hire the wheelchair accessible taxis directly from the taxi company. Maybe the taxi company charged 3x or more for the ride, but it's still cheaper for Uber.

DANmode 3y ago
In the long-run, sure, but think about how many more cents the investors made by ignoring the issue the last two+ quarters! /s