I love car-sharing (I’m a member of both Zipcar and Car2Go) but you have to admit that car-sharing doesn’t fully replace taxis. And is irrelevant to this young lady’s situation, since she would have been too drunk to drive her shared car home from the bar.
Uber’s pricing is clear enough, and a regular cab is an option, if you don’t mind waiting. If you DO mind waiting, well, there’s Uber, and it’s priced accordingly.
Is Uber taking advantage of the rarity of a service to rake in cash? Yes. Is it despicable? Kind of.
What’s worse than that, in my mind, is that the rider didn’t just accept responsibility for her actions. She got drunk, she called for Uber, she acknowledged the fare. Someone above said something about victim blaming, but I don’t see her as a victim in this, just as an adult facing the consequences of her choices and her actions.
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you should try life in a town like Atlanta with poor mass transit and taxi regulations that designed to maximize taxi revenue from business travel to and from the airport. Several hundred cabs wait for hours at the airport before getting to the front of the cab line and cabs waiting at hotels routinely refuse short trips. Hailing an actual cab on the street, even in the busiest nightlife districts is all but impossible. There are some quality dispatched cab companies, but the wait times for called cabs often runs 20 minutes or more because there are so few of them.
Uber and Lyft are a catalyst for change. That isn’t always good, but it ALSO isn’t always bad.
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I don’t see how you can spin it that way. She knows what she did, she made a mistake and it was a financial burden on her and her friends and family decided to help her out (an action that they can take their own responsibility for and that they don’t need us to defend them from). If you want to argue that she isn’t a victim, that’s fine, but you shouldn’t drag her into it, because we have her own words to describe what happened in a linked article above, and she doesn’t call herself a victim.
Her own words:
Approving a nine-times fare increase without realizing it is completely my fault, I understand that. The GoFundMe page was made in a very playful manner after a couple of my friends told me they would donate if I made it, in an attempt to brighten my birthday after seeing how upset I was.
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Is there a paid version of BoingBoing I can subscribe to, where I don’t have to see the weekly Uber plugs? Uber is a multi-billion dollar shithole corporation (funded by Goldman Sachs, Jeff Bezos, Google, et al) that makes Wal-Mart look appealing.
Anyone else getting tired of all the schill posts?
Sharing cars makes a lot of sense, in terms of efficient use of cars. Either owning a car or sharing a car, you’re the driver – you’re the one performing labor. It might cause a slight decline in auto sales, but overall, it’s a net gain for society.
Uber is entirely about fucking over both labor and consumers, in favor of the owners of Uber, and it’s a net loss.
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Not likely. Pop on over to uberpeople.net (Uber driver’s forum) and have a look at the complaints section. Uber floods the market with cars, the drivers in most markets are making far less than minimum wage.
I don’t like it when people beg their friends for money. Somehow if you have a cute story or a website to do the begging, it’s ok though? How about donating money to charities that help people who really need it?
Uber changes its commission rates at a moment’s notice, cutting into drivers’ incomes, that the company doesn’t insure drivers when they’re doing what he is right now — looking for a fare.
The public won’t do anything, the regulators won’t do anything.
“Uber is charging customers while avoiding the regulatory process, which creates unfair competition for taxi drivers,”
We welcome Uber Technologies to come to any market but insist they comply with city code and be regulated, like our taxicabs, to ensure the integrity of our services and the safety of our citizens.
Evidently the company has also decided the best line of defense when its service is under fire is to drive additional passenger demand via fare cuts…http://www.stopuber.com/
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It sounds to me that you have some issues in Atlanta with the regulatory structure under which taxis operate - and Uber and Lyft won’t do a thing to change that. They will only trash (or ignore) what regulations are in place. It’s up to you to influence your elected officials to improve the taxicab regulations. To start, encourage them to require taxis to take any fare within the city (as is the case in most cities) and to have a better taxi stand system at the airport. (I also understand that y’all need two airports down there, but that’s another discussion.)
BTW, I have absolutely nothing to do with the taxi industry (I work in healthcare). I know for certain that I have forced one taxi driver in Portland to go to an all day education class (was driving recklessly, i reported him, i received a thank you from the department of transportation). I am however against companies like Uber and Lyft trying to change the regulatory structures that work to protect me and those less advantaged than me from unregulated capitalism.
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serves him #right for #speaking in #hashtags. Anyone else find that #extremelyannoying?
And finally the penny drops! - this was so inevitable it’s laughable.
Of course you’re going to get gouged by a private non-publically regulated organisation, especially when they push regular taxi drivers out of business.
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For 30+ years Atlanta regional planning assumed that professionals would live in the suburbs and commute to town, where all the service jobs would be done by people in low income/subsidized housing. That’s why the subway system doesn’t go to the suburbs and why taxis are optimized for business travel and convention visitors. The city is changing quickly as younger people have infilled because they are sick of commute times. But the the taxi industry in Atlanta is very profitable (and very politically powerful) doing exactly what it’s doing. I don’t know of a single person who has successfully caused a taxi driver in Atlanta to be reprimanded because of failure to obey their carriage regulations. Uber and lyft aren’t asking for ANY regulatory changes in Atlanta, the cab companies are now trying to change regulations to force them OUT. As catalysts for needed change, IN MY CITY at least, I’m happy they’re here.
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FWIW - it would be nice to see better differentiation in reporting between Uber black car (which optimizes profits and utilization for licensed limos) and UberX (and lyft) which are far more sketchy propositions legally.
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I wasn’t aware that Uber had innovated instantaneously appearing cabs as well. Thank you corporate overlords. Quick, someone innovate a ‘Thank corporate overlord’ app, the old way of calling to thank them on the telephone is so 2013 (unless done ironically, which is hilarious, especially when dressed like ironic white trash).
She could have avoided that by taking a legal, licensed cab with a consistent rate instead of contributing to an illegal cab service taking income away from real taxi drivers.
Apparently, they’re in London now, but I can’t see them making any headway in the UK as a whole, as our cabs are, by and large, pretty damn good. I hope they don’t either, as cabbing is a halfway decent job if you need it and you don’t mind the hours. I’d rather uber didn’t fuck all that up (plus, I’dbe surprised if the dvla didn’t require the drivers to still take a cab licence test anyway).
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They say they’re working on it, but they want to make sure the iOS version is 100% first.
That’s the situation in much of Chicago as well (the non-wealthy and/or non-white parts).
I’ve had taxi company dispatchers tell me, after repeatedly not being able to find a cab to come to my home, that they can’t tell the taxi drivers where to go…which makes me wonder if they know the definition of the word “dispatch”. It is normal to wait at least an hour past the promised pick-up time for a cab to show up.
I’ve never used Uber, but I’ve downloaded the app so I could see what what going on, and there are always at least a few immediately-available cars for my address. UberX, not Uber, but that’s still better than no transportation at all.
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