To all who think passenger safety equals insurance: you are wrong. Passenger safety is much more. Passenger safety is mainly 3 topics, which are all have to be

To all who think passenger safety equals insurance: you are wrong. Passenger safety is much more. Passenger safety is mainly 3 topics, which are all have to be fulfilled: 1. The car has to be in proper technical conditions. 2. The driver is trained to be allowed to drive people around for business purposes. Higher standards apply, then for regular driving behavior. 3. Insurance, insurance of the passenger as well as insurance of third party. As for commercial drivers, they do much more millage and as such it is much more likely, that something happens. For (1): a commercially driven vehicle makes much more millage, as such it is required to visit inspection every year, while for regular vehicle in Germany it is only every other year. For (2): drivers with a commercial license to drive people around are required to have regular medical check-ups. Also wrong behaving while driving is judged much hard, mostly twice the amount and double the points. That means, they can easily loose their license. That way, there should be a commercial pressure on them to drive safely. By the way, Uber does not compete only with Taxi service. Their drivers don't need a taxi license at all. Because, in Germany there are besides of Taxi additional licenses for such business. The are a number of such services, that operate within legal bounds since tens of years. The only difference between the "cool" start-up Uber is, that those have no shiny App and you have to know there phone numbers. That said, there are also services, which have an App, like http://www.mydriver.de/fahrdienst/berlin http://www.mydriver.de/fahrdienst/berlin The main problem besides safety is also, that Uber promotes and supports moonlighting/illegal work. Because their argument is, that they provide only ride sharing. BUT, if that whould be true, then why promote a new ride sharing service called UberPool? If Uber would provide real ride sharing, as they argue, then they would only start UberPool and not UberX and UberPop. But with UberPool there is the problem for them, they will compete with lots of other ride sharing companies, which operate in Germany since years and which are well established, like Blablacar, Flinc and others. TL/DR: If Uber would operate within the well established business practices and requirements, nobody would complain. But they don't want, because they want to be cheap on the back of actively ignoring all requirements.