3 ms·
It's interesting watching this, because it seems inevitable that Uber will become exactly like the service it was meant to compete with: the Taxi industry. The
by bronbron 13y ago
It's interesting watching this, because it seems inevitable that Uber will become exactly like the service it was meant to compete with: the Taxi industry.
The whole saga has good, bad, and meh elements to all of it.
It's good that the question of auto insurance is coming up. I imagine that many of these drivers are painfully unaware that they are in serious insurance limbo. If someone's a de facto Uber employee, then yeah, Uber should pay for damages that the driver causes. It's definitely an exaggeration to say that Uber will "leave a trail of bodies in the street", but it's also unfair that the victim gets screwed here (because there's no chance in hell the driver's personal insurance will cover this).
It sucks that the odds are so stacked against them for providing (what at least used to be, I rarely use them nowadays) a good service. I remember being in SF a couple years back and trying to hail a cab for 30 minutes before getting an Uber in ~5 minutes. It was really shitty, and Uber really came through in the end. I was glad to pay the price difference.
Regardless of what happens, there's a lot of interesting ideas here that hopefully get noticed. Surge pricing's an interesting idea. Whereas taxis sacrifice reliability for relatively stable pricing, I'm glad there's a competing service that sacrifices stable pricing for reliability. It lets you make the decision about which is more important, and I'm sure we've all been in situations where getting somewhere quickly was worth the extra money.
- msrpotus 13y agoSince most taxi drivers are technically independent contractors, do the taxi companies insure them or does each driver have their own insurance?
- bronbron 13y agoThe independent contractor status screws them on all sorts of other things (e.g. health insurance), but I'm pretty sure auto insurance is the responsibility of the taxi company.
- steveklabnik 13y ago> It's interesting watching this, because it seems inevitable that Uber will become exactly like the service it was meant to compete with: the Taxi industry. It's almost as if http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html _also_ applies outside of software. > The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they've been fixed. There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't acquire bugs just by sitting around on your hard drive. Au contraire, baby! Now re-apply that to things like taxi and hotel regulations. I'm not suggesting things are perfect, but in many cases, these laws exist for a reason.
- dnautics 13y agowhen you change things slightly sometimes a shift in the regulations might be bigger than you expect. A lot of the taxi regulations have to do with the taximeter - as a passenger, you're have to have trust that the taximeter isn't shafting you (FWIW I don't think that lyft or uber necessarily completely solve this problem because you don't pick your route at the outset, unlike other livery services). Other parts of the taxi regulation to do with congestion caused by taxis that are cruising, which certainly seems like less of an issue for these "alt-taxis".