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I'm not defending them on this because that does seem to be a long enough time to be more proactive about it. You did bring up an interesting point though, Uber
by joshmlewis 12y ago
I'm not defending them on this because that does seem to be a long enough time to be more proactive about it. You did bring up an interesting point though, Uber is facing opposition from almost every city they are in. Whether it's small town South Carolina where I'm from and even in some of the largest cities in the world. It would be interesting to see how people deal with this on the inside and how it affects the culture.
- Kalium 12y agoUber's in a position where they get flak for breaking the rules while also being painfully aware that following the rules is worse for them. They face opposition, but every time they play nice it doesn't go well for them. The lesson here is that sometimes, you do much better by breaking all the rules.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago> The lesson here is that sometimes, you do much better by breaking all the rules. I guess we'll find out after Uber has exhausted its VC money, if Google doesn't replace them with self-driving cars first.
- skuhn 12y agoUber is already hamstrung by their inexperienced drivers's reliance on Google Maps for navigation. It is in no way equivalent to actually knowing your way around. The difficulty of making an urban self-driving car aside, Google would have to achieve a quantum leap forward in the quality of their navigation platform. Otherwise every auto-taxi in San Francisco will proceed single file down Van Ness, with turns onto Market or Mission only. All other streets will be empty and filled with pigeons.
- luddypants 12y agoI don't think it would require a quantum leap forward in tech to take traffic into account...
- skuhn 12y agoIt's not just taking traffic into account, which it can (sort of) already do. They need to actually use the accident data. Use a diverse set of routes to get to the same place, so that there isn't one path for every car on the road. Understand stoplight patterns and where it's hard or easy to make a turn. Not focus obsessively on shortest path rather than most tolerable path. Fundamentally what a good cab driver (which are not that common) offers you is knowledge of the best route to a destination from experience. Google Maps doesn't have that. And if it did, and it controlled a significant portion of the cars, it would no longer be the best route.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoYou know that you're describing things that machines are inherently better at than humans? And the problems you described stem mostly from the fact that maps also serve informative function (to learn the route in advance), and apparently Google didn't decide yet to compute routes in their navapp based on other active users of said navapp in the neighbourhood. But the data, infrastructure and algorithms are there. > And if it did, and it controlled a significant portion of the cars, it would no longer be the best route. Of course it would, because it would be able to run a global route optimization on all the cars simultaneously, thus outperforming even the most experienced human drivers by orders of magnitude. Getting above human level seems like a college-level exercise.
- skuhn 12y agoWell then, I look forward to it happening any day now.
- Kalium 12y ago> Uber is already hamstrung by their inexperienced drivers's reliance on Google Maps for navigation. It is in no way equivalent to actually knowing your way around. I don't know about you, but my experience is that Google Maps is far more reliable than a cabbie who purports to know their way around.
- vertex-four 12y agoMy experience is the exact opposite in most cities in the UK - Google Maps regularly gets me going insanely stupid routes, while the cabbies always seem to know every street and the best way to get to it. Perhaps the US has a different culture for its cab drivers? I can't imagine why, though. We have all the taxi licensing schemes and whatnot that the US does, so it can't be a case of "there's more competition so they're better". Perhaps it literally does just come down to culture?
- kd0amg 12y agoI've never heard of US cabbie licensing including any sort of "are you actually good at this?" check.
- Kalium 12y agoIn the US, cabbies are often relatively recent immigrants. They may know parts of the city OK, but they can't be relied upon to have the city memorized. There's licensing, but it's a far cry from the Knowledge of London.
- jeffwass 12y agoNot sure how it works elsewhere in the UK, but in London the cab drivers have to take an in-depth course called 'The Knowledge' which covers street routes, alternate routes during street closures, commercial destinations, etc. See some sample questions : http://www.taxiknowledge.co.uk/mock.html http://www.taxiknowledge.co.uk/mock.html This is majorly helpful beyond usual satnav use case. Eg, to get dropped off during high-traffic area, the cabbies will know well the surrounding streets and at your request can drop you off in a reasonable place 1-2 blocks away, for much less time and expense.
- aragot 12y ago> inexperienced driver's reliance on Google Maps for navigation When I lived in Sydney, I used to take the taxi often. And the rule was pretty much: If your address doesn't exist on Google Maps, they don't know how to get there. Even "At the corner of Hyde Park and Oxford St", which is in the CBD, returned a 404 from the driver's vocal API. They were all officially registered drivers, I just think cab's over reliance on Google Maps makes them unaware of the street names.
- ForHackernews 12y ago> every time they play nice it doesn't go well for them. When have they ever tried playing nice?
- Kalium 12y agoI believe they've tried that in Portland and a few other cities. It hasn't gone particularly well for them. Also, there are cautionary tales like Night School, where the industry being disrupted gets the new entrant shut down.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoWell, if the only way you can make business is to break laws and be total assholes to everyone, then it kind of strongly suggests you shouldn't be in business in the first place.