The reaction to UberPop in France has been shameful. Taxi drivers have been attacking UberPop drivers for weeks, following and harassing them. They even posted videos of themselves attacking UberPop drivers and their cars on youtube on facebook.
The latest outburst of violence saw taxi drivers blocking access to airports in Paris forcing passengers to walk the remainder of the way. Overturning and torching cars that looked like they might be Ubers. There was even a video of taxi drivers on a bridge on the "periphérique", the motorway that goes around Paris, dropping bricks on cars underneath.
The government instead of punishing them bowed down almost immediately ...
Part of the problem is that striking is sacrosanct in France. If you're striking you can get away with almost anything like kidnapping your employer and holding him hostage or blocking a major port for days on end (MyFerryLink strikes) ...
Well, we in Germany got the same result (UberPOP getting banned) by using, well, calmer methods.
We fixed it by telling them if they want to provide personal transport services, they have to adhere to the laws about that – insurance, a special drivers license, etc.
But that doesn't work that well in practice. E.g. UberPop was declared illegal by a Dutch judge in December. They just continued, paying the fines when drivers are found to be in violation.
While the violence in France is inexcusable, I can understand the frustration when you are competing with some company that has such deep pockets that are above the law. It's completely unfair competition (other taxi drivers need insurances, registration, etc), robbing existing taxi drivers of their livelihood.
(Yes, I am in favor of disruption in the taxi market, but with a level playing field, and guaranteed insurance for taxi customers.)
"Keep the market fair"
That's not their concern. It's protecting the taxi cartel by outlawing a superior method of transportation.
Keeping the market "fair" would allow competition.
Well, the market allows competition. If it plays by the existing rules.
Anyone can provide a chauffeur for hire service, even without a taxi license – you just need a special insurance and a special drivers license that permits you to transport people.
Many competitors of uber did the same.
uber was the only one who tried to operate without insurance, without the drivers license for chauffeurs, taxi and bus drivers.
Lots of hypocrisy everywhere. They were running an illegal company for a year, and kept going. Violence against drivers for weeks, they kept going. Government finally intervenes, puts them in jail for a day, they shut down the service the next.
Uber management is more interested in their own safety than their drivers, regardless of what they say.
Governement reacted only after the demonstrations, proving the justice happens only if you take it in your own hands. This is really sad.
Creating laws doesn't make something moral/normative. The fact that a law exists and whether it's "good" are two different things. Breaking a "bad" law might be a crime, but I'm not convinced that it's "bad".
This is a country that is doing everything it can to create laws which increase the cost of transportation and reduce the ability to get a ride. It's a law that makes things less safe (there aren't enough taxis to properly service late night bars so people are forced to drive drunk - people die because of the law to protect a monopoly). We can look at the law and the reason for the law and ask if the price for protecting a government granted monopoly is worth the price (lives and money from increased transportation costs) paid.
"so people are forced to drive drunk - people die because of the law to protect a monopoly"
Jesus christ this is literally the stupidest thing I have heard all day, and I have been following what is going on reddit since early morning.
If anyone ever says they were "forced to drunk drive" by anything they deserve to be slapped and have their licence taken away, forever. If you go drinking, you don't bring your car with you!!!!!!
More like people die because they (or, quite possibly other people) choose to drive drunk.
The presence of the law should help deter them from making that choice. But that doesn't establish that laws should always be followed or shouldn't be changed - it just supports the case that that law should be followed and should not be changed, which no one was arguing against.
Other things also help decrease drunk driving. Healthy social norms can have a big impact. Convenient alternatives also has a big impact. What we're discussing here is a particular, especially convenient alternative.
It is wrong to excuse people who put others' lives at risk because doing otherwise is inconvenient. But it is incorrect not to expect that some people will do so, and account for that as a part of the impact of laws.
Im no fan of Uber and their tactics, and this pg guy doesn't sound very smart from that comment to me -- but there is a distinction to be made between the legal and illegal operations Uber run.
Using a mobile phone as an automated dispatcher for cabs is a fine idea, and improves the experience for the customer.
Breaking local laws relating to insurance, background checks, surge pricing, provisions for disabled passengers etc. is NOT fine.
BTW, pg is Paul Graham, founder of y combinator and creator of hacker news. So, "this guy" is generally very well respected by the the users of this site.
This is nonsense. Taxi services are regulated for good reason. Many cities and countries have well-regulated transparent taxi industries.
Uber often seems to seek to bypass that regulation because, eh, disruption. I would expect any city to do something when faced with a private corporation attempting to flout their laws for profit. Doing so is in no way correlated with any measure of how corrupt that city is.
taxis services are regulated for good reason yes. but it doesn't mean the regulation is efficient. when you pay for a service that provides you exactly the same experience than a discounted service like Uber then there is no sense for this service.
Taxi drivers in france is expensive and drivers are uneducated, rude, unpolite. Compare this to drivers in england and japan where they respect the customer and provide a good service and then you will understand why uber disrupting french taxis. because the regulation is only based about how much money you need to put to buy a license while the regulation should be about having a proper formation and learn about customer service.
Actually i have limited experience in UK but better on Japan where i lived long. Still I do not think it is the same population in UK using taxis and ubers. I am almost certain that the people using Uber in UK are people who almost never used taxis in their life. I don't see why would someone would change from taxi to Uber in countries such as England or Japan. if you take a taxi that means you can afford it either you would take public transportation in 90% of the cases.
Uber in UK is just a totally different service than Taxis. as long as taxi drivers are well trained professionals with a sense of providing quality service then they don't compete with Uber.
It is same with amazon and librarians. Librarian assume they just have to sell books. Since amazon they have to provide a service , help the customer , advise him, instruct him, guide him. Those things amazon can't do and those things will save the librarians. it is the same for cab drivers.
Uber is a good for us customers. Obviously it won't be a good thing when they will be on a monopoly situation where they will increase prices after having destroyed concurrents but who cares?
Taxi services are primarily regulated at the behest of the existing taxi companies to keep out competition. The public interest of the regulation is just a cover story.
We just returned from Paris, and I can tell you that people in Paris are not happy with cab drivers (overpriced, and often refuse riders based on too many people, too many bags, or too short of a trip).
This smells like a campaign of a greedy and corrupt union hiding behind a law to protect its poorly performing industry.
In warsaw, about 90% percent of the drivers will try to fuck you. Be it by refusing to give you a receipt, taking longer ways, asking a price taken out of their arses or just straight up lying to you to get your money, especially if you're a foreigner.
Most of them drive like complete idiots and break numerous rules even during a simple 10 minute ride.
So my question is what does taxi regulations do exactly? Because it seems like it's not working.
Well, as a brazilian, his statement sounded very true to me. I'll try no to generalize as much as he did and tell the story from our perspective.
Taxi drivers and politicians in Brazil are fighting Uber because they are losing slices of a pie that is deeply corrupted. A single person (most of them are politicians or friends with city councilmen) hold hundreds of Taxi Plates and "rent" them to ordinary drivers that obviously can't have their own plates because they're not fairly distributed and even if they were, would be prohibitively expensive. So these ordinary drivers start their working days owing R$200 to the plate holders, resulting in a service that has the customer safety, comfort, etc as the last priority.
We do have laws and regulations but it'd be naive to think they benefit the passengers. One of them requires the cars to be inspected every six months, which would be a nice thing, except these inspections are only another way for the abovementioned politicians/government have more money to be diverted - some cars are ridiculously filthy and poor maintained.
When Uber arrived last year it was indeed a disruption: polite drivers, well maintained cars, fair service. The so called inspections happen in real time through in app reviews by the people who are supposed to be protected after all - the passengers.
As the only city councillor to vote in favor of Uber in Sao Paulo well said: "it was a massacre", corruption is so evidently high that not even a discussion took place about how the things Uber does right could be incorporated into the existing Taxi ecosystem. And pg's statement fits right in: politicians fought so ferociously to ban Uber (faster than many other agendas that are crucial to Brazil) that it becomes a picture of how corrupt they are.
To complete, I think that services that try to disrupt existing services are good to take us to the opposite side of a sine wave - they come to draw our attention of to things we were probably overlooking. Honest cities and politicians will take the opportunity to bring the good things into discussion, corrupt ones will ferociously try to suppress it.
Although a disproportional comparison, I remember when I visited one of the post offices in my city as a kindergarten student in the late 90s - the manager that was taking us through the guided visit was very anxious of how emails were driving the telegram usage down.
If you were to design a taxi system from scratch you'd probably want to have
* increased levels of insurance to cover passengers and their belongings
* rigid maintenance requirements on the vehicles that do get more wear & tear through commercial usage
* background checks on drivers, not as much as molester/criminal type that the press likes to sensationalize, but just driving record - obviously someone who keeps running red lights, gets speeding tickets, gets into road rage and runs over people should spend less time on the road, not more
* once you've figured those requirements out, a third party needs to enforce the rules and be able to shut off the offending drivers
Most likely candidate for a third party is a government agency. Most likely process for approving/forbidding someone from entering the field of commercial transportation is licensing.
If there are better ideas that would lead to increase in public safety and decrease in bad guys abusing the system just to turn a quick buck, those are certainly worth discussing.
"Uber is so obviously a good thing (for the broken US system as well as for the US startup scene, the industry with which I line my pockets)". His statement reads like a joke to me, a parody of himself.
Uber might offer a better service to people today, but what's the long term (and the really long term) price of allowing this monopolizing corporation into your city? Do you sell out? In portuguese we say "barato sai caro", meaning cheap/easy options may turn out expensive in the long run.
why would it be a monopolizing corporation? There are competitors such as Lyft and Singaporean GrabTaxi. The monopolizing corporation is actually the cab companies. Think about it!
I think of it as being monopolizing by virtue of being a startup with network effect and economies of scale. It's a winner take all market, like Google and Facebook do monopolize most of the world's communication and browsing. Maybe it's not the best use of the word monopoly. Colonizing would be far better, but that reeks of american imperialism, oops.
sorry, now you are just not making sense. I think to have these debates, we need to agree to think clearly about the problem. Colonizing? They are providing a service. Nobody is forcing anybody to use the service. There are three issues here
a) many ( not all ) of the regulations that make cabs scarce and expensive are unnecessary
b) it is not fair to people who paid for the licenses to allow a competitor to operate without licenses
Nobody is forcing anybody in the strict sense, yes. If you ignore the network effect, even more so. How can I connect with friends without Facebook when everyone else is on there (there or on instagram and whatsapp, also FB property). How can I not use Uber in the future if they root out and kill off taxis, and even public transportation is left wanting when everyone is just happy to use Uber? And just because everyone's happy to use it (it's cheaper even) doesn't mean it's good in the long run, which is my point.
ok, but we don't really know for sure what is good in the long run. That would require perfect foresight about the long run. If it is cheaper and more convenient and people like it, then great ! in order to mitigate your concerns, society needs to remove barriers to competition not add more barriers
You could look at the data, cities where Uber operates, and decide for yourself. Its not necessary to speculate. Also, its not a monopoly - competition exists already. Get the city out of the business of selling access - let the free market provide.
I don't like to let the "free market" (that is, big investor money) provide for a basic need such as transportation. See my other comment regarding "monopoly".
If it is not a monopoly, then it is necessary to speculate about what happens if it becomes one. That said, I think that's something we can address as (and if) it comes up.
The existing taxi industry is a protected monopoly. In a hypothetical future where uber has displaced the competition any other company could spring up and take their business.
Just like a retailer sprang up and took Amazon's lead in the ecommerce business, right? Right?
Some corporations become too big to fail, like Google or Facebook--they keep buying off other companies and buying laws too. America is a lobby nation. How can you honesly expect anyone else to displace the trillion-dollar company that Uber will eventually become? Unless you actually mean companies will spring up, present a threat, then get acquihired by Uber^. Money talks!
^ If you expect an enterpreneur to face Uber head-on despite multi-billion dollar offers on the one side and immense legal hindrance on the other, you expect a hero. We should expect a democratic society, not american heroes.
Uber has it's share of issues. Just because the alternative is just as bad or worse doesn't automatically make Uber good.
Not all laws are in place to mess with Uber or suppress competition, some of them are actually to the benefit of the public. Requiring insurance or having the driver registered as self-employed doesn't seem unreasonable.
why doesn't it seem unreasonable? I mean, why can't it be up to the person using the app to call that driver or not? The app has the person's name, their rating from other customers, etc. Why can't the individual consumer decide what to do with that information ?
>> Not all laws are in place to mess with Uber or suppress competition, some of them are actually to the benefit of the public. Requiring insurance or having the driver registered as self-employed doesn't seem unreasonable.
> why doesn't it seem unreasonable? I mean, why can't it be up to the person using the app to call that driver or not?
How could it possibly be reasonable to leave it up to the person using the app to decide whether the driver requires insurance or not, when an accident may easily lead to a third party having claims against the driver?
muddling the issue. At least in Chicago, drivers are already required to have insurance. Why do they need to have special additional insurance if they are Uber drivers? But, again, in Chicago, the city and state worked this out with Uber and came to a compromise.
If insurance is required in any case, there's no choice left for the app user to make, so why should it be left to them? That said, I very much doubt that the required insurance covers comercial transportation of passengers (which uber certainly is), so that explains why they need “additional” insurance covering that.
as I said in other comments, insurance here is red herring. because the real difference in cost comes from requiring the license for hundreds of thousands of dollars and the city only issues a limited number of licenses
I don't believe that you as the customer should be responsible for checking the drivers insurance, or if the car is in working order. I'm not qualified to do either of those things.
Similarly I would like people who accept my money for services to be well do the proper paper work for the tax authorities. If you're self-employed in any other business you need to register that, why should Uber drivers be excepted? I can accept Ubers argument that their drivers are "independent contractors", regardless of how stupid I believe it is, but then they should be registered as such.
I don't disagree that many of the rules around taxi services are obsolete or hinder competition, but I also don't condone Uber just breaking all rules using that argument. "Disruption" can't be an excuse to pick and choose which laws to follow. There's a pretty good business case to be made for breaking the speed limit as well (They could call it UberHyperDrive, for people in a rush), but you wouldn't accept that either.
Insurance argument is a red herring because people who drive cars are already required to have insurance, irrespective of Uber. We are talking about some special form of insurance on top of that. Uber can actually either self insure drivers or get very very cheap insurance for them because they know who the good drivers are.
This is exactly why Twitter sucks for discussion. You couldn't possibly illuminate a viewpoint on any matter using it so you end up making broad statements that get trounced by reality. Particularly an issue with such nuances.
It is obviously a good thing, but it is also unfair to a) pass a law that says you must buy a 100k license to be a cab driver and b) allow a company to operate which makes your 100k investment worthless.
True, this law is unnecessary, but it's not hard to see why taxi drivers who paid for their licenses fair and square are upset
At least in Chicago, Uber and cabs seem to coexist pretty well. The main difference is, cab drivers seem to have a bit more clue as to the layout of the city and more efficient at knowing directions etc
No, the ones who make taxi drivers pay money and run a gauntlet are the ones stealing that living away. Uber is making that process unnecessary, and that makes the people who already paid the price feel buyer's remorse.
That's not really buyer's remorse. They paid for their license because you need one to operate as a taxi (along with other requirements), it's the LAW. Uber drivers do not pay for any license, so they can operate at a lower cost, but it's illegal.
I'm all for Uber, I used UberPOP a few times to come back home late (5am), but not late enough (so the public transportation was not yet available) and there were not enough regular taxis (or they were overpriced.)
So Uber fills a need. They'd need to work with the local government but I'm pretty sure we will be the last to allow them; France is way to conservative and protective of the local guild-like organizations (like taxi drivers.) In the meantime I'll keep seeing drunk/high people driving home.
" They paid for their license because you need one to operate as a taxi (along with other requirements), it's the LAW" hence why the real crook are the people making taxi drivers pay 200K for a driving license. Uber, like Free Telecom or like Amazon is a disrupting force. and disrupting forces are always benefical at their early stages. they tend to become much less good for the people when they become leaders on markets were they have destroyed all their oponents. Amazon will soon be the first example of that.
First, in France, even if you're not a taxi, there's a special driving license for "transport de personnes" ("people transportation" ?) which is required if you want to use a vehicle with more than 9 (IIRC) passengers, eg. bus drivers. There's also the matter of insurance. I think we can agree that establishing clear responsibilities and ensuring everyone is properly covered by an insurance in case of an accident is a good thing.
Then there's the taxi license. In France (as in other countries) their number per city is limited. Therefore at the end of their career, taxi drivers sell them and recoup the cost of their acquisition. That's a sum of money they don't want to lose. Those license can get very expensive in major cities like Paris.
Finally there are also some kind of regulations about the car itself (like you have to have a standardized indicator on the roof of the car, a taximeter, etc.)
IMHO we need some reforms to make sure every Uber driver has at least the right insurance and perhaps has followed some kind of course to be able to transport people. As for the taxi licenses, it's kind of an artificially created scarcity. If removed, there are some costs (existing drivers will want to get a refund, then they may want to change occupation, etc.) Finally, as for the car requirements, Uber takes care of the indicator/taximeter. They also have some rules about the cars.
In conclusion, Uber is not trying to disrupt a market, they're going against an existing institution with clear rules and regulations in a lot of countries.
That usually lasts until the first accident, where it's discovered that passengers are not covered by the insurance the driver had, the vehicle did not have proper maintenance, etc. which is when the general public goes for pitchforks and demands protection from such "wild west" practices.
Becoming a taxi driver here in Edinburgh appears to cost £165 - which includes a test which appears to be pretty straightforward to pass.
Is that really an "exorbitant amounts of money"?
[NB I appreciate that Edinburgh may be the exception - but Europe is rather large and diverse so making such a generalisation about an entire continent seems rather unwise].
It appears that the licensing process is set to only accept a very small amount of the total applicants. That way politicians and taxi owners have something to point to about how it's a level playing field, and they leave things to a black box bureaucratic process to actually stifle competition.
In Istanbul taxi plates cost about $300k-$500k. They are then rented and re-rented to multiple drivers. Taxi drivers and of course passengers gets the shaft
Birmingham UK: we have black cabs/hackneys (Taxi Operators Association, TOA)[1] that you can hail in the street and we have Private Hire cars that you must book in advance.
Both require an appropriate licence from the City Council, and the licence requires appropriate insurance. Charges for the licences do not appear to be huge [2], but there is a moratorium in operation on the granting of Hackney licences at present [3].
Many of the Private Hire cars have both the local operator and an Uber sticker on the car. As an older gent with a Blackberry, I shall continue to phone seven sevens when I need to book a taxi. Younger people with smart phones appear to be using the Uber app, but there are also apps for the various Private Hire operators and for the TOA. One wonders if there is an opportunity for a 'meta-app' that can price a journey using all three apps and then suggest the cheapest.
I am not aware of any UberPop style activity. I suspect that carrying passengers for money in the UK is quite regulated and that trying to get round that would lead to difficulties. Buses/trains/metro are OK for most of what I do except for returning from convivial social gatherings late at night where I will prefer to use a taxi.
I've used the same taxi company here in Edinburgh for years - helps that recent employers of mine have also had accounts with them. The number is burned into my brain:
Good point... a key problem though is self-inflicted. Taxi driver unions have a vested interest in keeping the number of licenses in operation low (so keeping rates high). That only pushes the value of each license up - and you have to spend thousands to buy someone else's license.
Same thing used to happen in NYC - but with the onset of Uber, the value of licenses (which were steadily climbing) has flatlined or even dropped.
It's unfortunate for the last set of drivers with these licenses, but it's a horrible way to run a much-needed service.
Insurance, training - absolutely. But forcing investment in super expensive legacy licenses is very inefficient.
Uber POP has been against the law for one year now, this was bound to happen. Even if what the Taxis did is insanely wrong and should be condemned, Uber POP is illegal according to the french law and even trendy tech startups have to obey the law.
It's now up to all the actors to find a way to make this work.
Uber's service is illegal in most places, including the US. However they grew and became popular fast enough that it put pressure on local governments to change the laws, rather than put pressure on them to ban Uber. It's basically their business model.
Apparently this didn't work as well in France as it did in the US.
Uber has evolved from simple ridesharing into a real livery. That part of Uber is not illegal in most places. UberPop is the reincarnation of the original Uber. That is illegal almost everywhere. The taxis aren't protesting Uber. They don't like them but as long as they follow the law they'll have to live with it. What they are up in arms over is UberPop.
Anywhere in the world you take money you are now engaged in commerce. And you have to follow the rules on commerce. Even the kid that delivers your pizza has to have auto insurance that covers delivery.
Why aren't French entrepreneurs rioting in the streets to protest against protectionist laws that primarily serve to shield incumbents from competition?
France doesn't have as many start-up guys and girls as you probably think and besides that they probably do not feel that uberpop is entirely without blame in how this all played out.
From what "aikah" posted below, it sounds like shielding consists of requiring proper driver training, equivalent of commercial insurance on the vehicle, and license (which probably involves some mandatory maintenance, as commercially utilized vehicles tend to have higher mileage and higher level of abuse than personal vehicles).
Compliance with all the requirements, however, removes the economic advantage.
UberPOP is LEGAL in France, nobody has shut down UberPOP.
HOWEVER :
- A driver who wants to drive for UberPOP can do that, BUT it has to follow the french laws which means: paying a specific amount of taxes on their revenue, getting a 250 hours training, paying for a specific insurance
Of course, driving legally for UberPOP in France IS NOT PROFITABLE at all.
Uber can't have it both ways. It cannot fix prices for rides and expect legal drivers to work and make a profit with these prices.
Other services such as private limousines can continue, they are legal, as long as drivers operate legally.
UberPOP business model cannot work in France. But they are free to provide and distribute their app. The app is legal.
Do the drivers also need taxi licenses? They don't release them any more, so the only way to get one is to buy it for 6 figures on the gray market from a licensed driver wanting to retire (in theory it can't be sold, but there are workarounds and loopholes).
No need of a taxi license, "car rental with Chauffeur" is legal, and has existed for ages. The only difference with a taxi is that you are supposed to book them in advance, and you can't just hail them. (And their might be some other restrictions around airport or something..)
But if you hire a chauffeur (with his car), he needs to have the proper insurance to cover him and its passenger. Uber drivers actually must and have subscribed to them.
The issue with Uberpop is that most of its drivers don't have subscribed to that special insurance, and as a results are pushing the cost to everyone else.
As a regular driver, I would be quite unhappy if there was like 50k+ plus Uberpop driving all day long full of passengers, and if they were paying the same amount of money than an occasional driver, while being much more likely to have costly crashes.
Hence the reason to require that UberPop drivers have a proper transportation insurance in the first place.
Aside of any fairness, or legacy medallion system consideration, it is just a bad idea economically to have everyone paying higher insurance costs so that UberPop can reap all the benefits...
My major complaint about uber is how it externalises its costs. Things like insurance. The risk profile is not the same when carrying passenger as for private travel. When an uber driver decides to forgo getting the correct insurance they are pushing their extra risk on to me and the rest of the people in the private travel insurance pool.
More long term uber shares a lot of similarities to napster. The music industry was never able to unscramble the egg after napster and the taxi industry is in the same position. Of course if you are an investor in uber your investment probably has the same long term value as napster.
You can always go for a higher class vehicle. UberBlack providers usually have all the licenses, insurances and permits that are necessary. They know it's a reputation business, many of them use Uber as one of many lead generators, and therefore don't want the risk to the remainder of their business.
I should have been more precise and said uber x rather than just uber. UberBlack is a fine business, the problem is it is not what is sustaining the current valuation of uber.
I really dislike the protectionist barriers that exist to keep competition away from taxis, pharmacies, etc... but the people that are currently in those jobs often got themselves into a massive amount of debt to buy a license.
We should get rid of the old system, but we cannot simply tell the people who invested 100,000+ Euros into a license that it's just become worthless. Should those people just kill themselves?
I'm not sure how it is in France, but in some cities a few large firms own the taxi licenses and rent them out to drivers. The people who buy them do so as an investment, speculating that because of their scarcity that the resale value will rise. Not all investments pan out. If the citizens want to bail them out they could offer to buy back the licenses.
I'm surprised nobody has yet commented on WHY they are shutting down tonight.
From [1]: "We have decided to suspend UberPOP starting tonight [...] first and foremost to protect our drivers ." - Thibaud Simphal, CEO Uber France
Translation: "this is supposed to be a developed country with the rule of law, but the police is not capable of doing its job (or willing), so we're giving up".
Another pearl: "Since the first of January, only 215 new VTC [licenses for private cars, the so called "legal" way of becoming an UberX] licenses were given out in the whole of France, even though during the same period, we had over 25,000 applicants at Uber to become a VTC driver."
That's a 0.86% success rate. I'm sure those 215 cars were the absolute limit the market (of ~60 million inhabitants, with 400,000 passengers already using UberPOP) could bear and that the decision is not at all politically motivated.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadThe latest outburst of violence saw taxi drivers blocking access to airports in Paris forcing passengers to walk the remainder of the way. Overturning and torching cars that looked like they might be Ubers. There was even a video of taxi drivers on a bridge on the "periphérique", the motorway that goes around Paris, dropping bricks on cars underneath.
The government instead of punishing them bowed down almost immediately ...
Part of the problem is that striking is sacrosanct in France. If you're striking you can get away with almost anything like kidnapping your employer and holding him hostage or blocking a major port for days on end (MyFerryLink strikes) ...
We fixed it by telling them if they want to provide personal transport services, they have to adhere to the laws about that – insurance, a special drivers license, etc.
While the violence in France is inexcusable, I can understand the frustration when you are competing with some company that has such deep pockets that are above the law. It's completely unfair competition (other taxi drivers need insurances, registration, etc), robbing existing taxi drivers of their livelihood.
(Yes, I am in favor of disruption in the taxi market, but with a level playing field, and guaranteed insurance for taxi customers.)
That’s one of the best ways to keep the market fair.
Anyone can provide a chauffeur for hire service, even without a taxi license – you just need a special insurance and a special drivers license that permits you to transport people.
Many competitors of uber did the same.
uber was the only one who tried to operate without insurance, without the drivers license for chauffeurs, taxi and bus drivers.
Uber management is more interested in their own safety than their drivers, regardless of what they say.
Governement reacted only after the demonstrations, proving the justice happens only if you take it in your own hands. This is really sad.
Edit: actually I meant this tweet from yesterday: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/616683543830339584 which had the other one embbeded
"Crime is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it."
This is a country that is doing everything it can to create laws which increase the cost of transportation and reduce the ability to get a ride. It's a law that makes things less safe (there aren't enough taxis to properly service late night bars so people are forced to drive drunk - people die because of the law to protect a monopoly). We can look at the law and the reason for the law and ask if the price for protecting a government granted monopoly is worth the price (lives and money from increased transportation costs) paid.
Jesus christ this is literally the stupidest thing I have heard all day, and I have been following what is going on reddit since early morning.
If anyone ever says they were "forced to drunk drive" by anything they deserve to be slapped and have their licence taken away, forever. If you go drinking, you don't bring your car with you!!!!!!
Which country? The country Blablacar came out of?
More like people die because they (or, quite possibly other people) choose to break the law against drunk driving?
The presence of the law should help deter them from making that choice. But that doesn't establish that laws should always be followed or shouldn't be changed - it just supports the case that that law should be followed and should not be changed, which no one was arguing against.
Other things also help decrease drunk driving. Healthy social norms can have a big impact. Convenient alternatives also has a big impact. What we're discussing here is a particular, especially convenient alternative.
It is wrong to excuse people who put others' lives at risk because doing otherwise is inconvenient. But it is incorrect not to expect that some people will do so, and account for that as a part of the impact of laws.
Using a mobile phone as an automated dispatcher for cabs is a fine idea, and improves the experience for the customer.
Breaking local laws relating to insurance, background checks, surge pricing, provisions for disabled passengers etc. is NOT fine.
Uber often seems to seek to bypass that regulation because, eh, disruption. I would expect any city to do something when faced with a private corporation attempting to flout their laws for profit. Doing so is in no way correlated with any measure of how corrupt that city is.
Taxi drivers in france is expensive and drivers are uneducated, rude, unpolite. Compare this to drivers in england and japan where they respect the customer and provide a good service and then you will understand why uber disrupting french taxis. because the regulation is only based about how much money you need to put to buy a license while the regulation should be about having a proper formation and learn about customer service.
It is same with amazon and librarians. Librarian assume they just have to sell books. Since amazon they have to provide a service , help the customer , advise him, instruct him, guide him. Those things amazon can't do and those things will save the librarians. it is the same for cab drivers.
Uber is a good for us customers. Obviously it won't be a good thing when they will be on a monopoly situation where they will increase prices after having destroyed concurrents but who cares?
We just returned from Paris, and I can tell you that people in Paris are not happy with cab drivers (overpriced, and often refuse riders based on too many people, too many bags, or too short of a trip).
This smells like a campaign of a greedy and corrupt union hiding behind a law to protect its poorly performing industry.
It's a single data point, but crimes committed by the drivers of unlicensed cabs in London are a big enough problem for there to be awareness campaigns like this one: <https://tfl.gov.uk/campaign/be-cabwise>. Example of the kind of criminal activity that regulation is trying to deter: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22998900>.
Most of them drive like complete idiots and break numerous rules even during a simple 10 minute ride.
So my question is what does taxi regulations do exactly? Because it seems like it's not working.
Taxi drivers and politicians in Brazil are fighting Uber because they are losing slices of a pie that is deeply corrupted. A single person (most of them are politicians or friends with city councilmen) hold hundreds of Taxi Plates and "rent" them to ordinary drivers that obviously can't have their own plates because they're not fairly distributed and even if they were, would be prohibitively expensive. So these ordinary drivers start their working days owing R$200 to the plate holders, resulting in a service that has the customer safety, comfort, etc as the last priority.
We do have laws and regulations but it'd be naive to think they benefit the passengers. One of them requires the cars to be inspected every six months, which would be a nice thing, except these inspections are only another way for the abovementioned politicians/government have more money to be diverted - some cars are ridiculously filthy and poor maintained.
When Uber arrived last year it was indeed a disruption: polite drivers, well maintained cars, fair service. The so called inspections happen in real time through in app reviews by the people who are supposed to be protected after all - the passengers.
As the only city councillor to vote in favor of Uber in Sao Paulo well said: "it was a massacre", corruption is so evidently high that not even a discussion took place about how the things Uber does right could be incorporated into the existing Taxi ecosystem. And pg's statement fits right in: politicians fought so ferociously to ban Uber (faster than many other agendas that are crucial to Brazil) that it becomes a picture of how corrupt they are.
To complete, I think that services that try to disrupt existing services are good to take us to the opposite side of a sine wave - they come to draw our attention of to things we were probably overlooking. Honest cities and politicians will take the opportunity to bring the good things into discussion, corrupt ones will ferociously try to suppress it.
Although a disproportional comparison, I remember when I visited one of the post offices in my city as a kindergarten student in the late 90s - the manager that was taking us through the guided visit was very anxious of how emails were driving the telegram usage down.
You can't just leave us hanging, what reason is it? Why does the taxi driver cartel deserve economic rents at the expense of everyone else?
* increased levels of insurance to cover passengers and their belongings
* rigid maintenance requirements on the vehicles that do get more wear & tear through commercial usage
* background checks on drivers, not as much as molester/criminal type that the press likes to sensationalize, but just driving record - obviously someone who keeps running red lights, gets speeding tickets, gets into road rage and runs over people should spend less time on the road, not more
* once you've figured those requirements out, a third party needs to enforce the rules and be able to shut off the offending drivers
Most likely candidate for a third party is a government agency. Most likely process for approving/forbidding someone from entering the field of commercial transportation is licensing.
If there are better ideas that would lead to increase in public safety and decrease in bad guys abusing the system just to turn a quick buck, those are certainly worth discussing.
Uber might offer a better service to people today, but what's the long term (and the really long term) price of allowing this monopolizing corporation into your city? Do you sell out? In portuguese we say "barato sai caro", meaning cheap/easy options may turn out expensive in the long run.
a) many ( not all ) of the regulations that make cabs scarce and expensive are unnecessary
b) it is not fair to people who paid for the licenses to allow a competitor to operate without licenses
c) Uber is good for consumers.
Somehow, a reasonable compromise must be found
Some corporations become too big to fail, like Google or Facebook--they keep buying off other companies and buying laws too. America is a lobby nation. How can you honesly expect anyone else to displace the trillion-dollar company that Uber will eventually become? Unless you actually mean companies will spring up, present a threat, then get acquihired by Uber^. Money talks!
^ If you expect an enterpreneur to face Uber head-on despite multi-billion dollar offers on the one side and immense legal hindrance on the other, you expect a hero. We should expect a democratic society, not american heroes.
Not all laws are in place to mess with Uber or suppress competition, some of them are actually to the benefit of the public. Requiring insurance or having the driver registered as self-employed doesn't seem unreasonable.
How could it possibly be reasonable to leave it up to the person using the app to decide whether the driver requires insurance or not, when an accident may easily lead to a third party having claims against the driver?
Similarly I would like people who accept my money for services to be well do the proper paper work for the tax authorities. If you're self-employed in any other business you need to register that, why should Uber drivers be excepted? I can accept Ubers argument that their drivers are "independent contractors", regardless of how stupid I believe it is, but then they should be registered as such.
I don't disagree that many of the rules around taxi services are obsolete or hinder competition, but I also don't condone Uber just breaking all rules using that argument. "Disruption" can't be an excuse to pick and choose which laws to follow. There's a pretty good business case to be made for breaking the speed limit as well (They could call it UberHyperDrive, for people in a rush), but you wouldn't accept that either.
True, this law is unnecessary, but it's not hard to see why taxi drivers who paid for their licenses fair and square are upset
At least in Chicago, Uber and cabs seem to coexist pretty well. The main difference is, cab drivers seem to have a bit more clue as to the layout of the city and more efficient at knowing directions etc
Yea, like complaining about other country's problems is sacrosanct in the USA.
Taxi drivers in Europe have to pay exorbitant amounts of money and go thru a gauntlet to be able to make a living.
Uber, imho, steals that living away in a very real way...
I'm all for Uber, I used UberPOP a few times to come back home late (5am), but not late enough (so the public transportation was not yet available) and there were not enough regular taxis (or they were overpriced.)
So Uber fills a need. They'd need to work with the local government but I'm pretty sure we will be the last to allow them; France is way to conservative and protective of the local guild-like organizations (like taxi drivers.) In the meantime I'll keep seeing drunk/high people driving home.
First, in France, even if you're not a taxi, there's a special driving license for "transport de personnes" ("people transportation" ?) which is required if you want to use a vehicle with more than 9 (IIRC) passengers, eg. bus drivers. There's also the matter of insurance. I think we can agree that establishing clear responsibilities and ensuring everyone is properly covered by an insurance in case of an accident is a good thing.
Then there's the taxi license. In France (as in other countries) their number per city is limited. Therefore at the end of their career, taxi drivers sell them and recoup the cost of their acquisition. That's a sum of money they don't want to lose. Those license can get very expensive in major cities like Paris.
Finally there are also some kind of regulations about the car itself (like you have to have a standardized indicator on the roof of the car, a taximeter, etc.)
IMHO we need some reforms to make sure every Uber driver has at least the right insurance and perhaps has followed some kind of course to be able to transport people. As for the taxi licenses, it's kind of an artificially created scarcity. If removed, there are some costs (existing drivers will want to get a refund, then they may want to change occupation, etc.) Finally, as for the car requirements, Uber takes care of the indicator/taximeter. They also have some rules about the cars.
In conclusion, Uber is not trying to disrupt a market, they're going against an existing institution with clear rules and regulations in a lot of countries.
Becoming a taxi driver here in Edinburgh appears to cost £165 - which includes a test which appears to be pretty straightforward to pass.
Is that really an "exorbitant amounts of money"?
[NB I appreciate that Edinburgh may be the exception - but Europe is rather large and diverse so making such a generalisation about an entire continent seems rather unwise].
Which is legally what uber is.
Uber just didn’t want to pay insurance fees.
It appears that the licensing process is set to only accept a very small amount of the total applicants. That way politicians and taxi owners have something to point to about how it's a level playing field, and they leave things to a black box bureaucratic process to actually stifle competition.
Uber does not operate as taxi, but, as they can be not directly hailed from the street, they act as chauffeur for hire.
Both require an appropriate licence from the City Council, and the licence requires appropriate insurance. Charges for the licences do not appear to be huge [2], but there is a moratorium in operation on the granting of Hackney licences at present [3].
Many of the Private Hire cars have both the local operator and an Uber sticker on the car. As an older gent with a Blackberry, I shall continue to phone seven sevens when I need to book a taxi. Younger people with smart phones appear to be using the Uber app, but there are also apps for the various Private Hire operators and for the TOA. One wonders if there is an opportunity for a 'meta-app' that can price a journey using all three apps and then suggest the cheapest.
I am not aware of any UberPop style activity. I suspect that carrying passengers for money in the UK is quite regulated and that trying to get round that would lead to difficulties. Buses/trains/metro are OK for most of what I do except for returning from convivial social gatherings late at night where I will prefer to use a taxi.
[1] http://www.toataxis.co.uk/
[2] http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagena...
[3] http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/taxi-licensing
Central Taxis 0131 229 2468
Not the case in Ireland. Taxis were deregulated 10+ years ago.
Same thing used to happen in NYC - but with the onset of Uber, the value of licenses (which were steadily climbing) has flatlined or even dropped.
It's unfortunate for the last set of drivers with these licenses, but it's a horrible way to run a much-needed service.
Insurance, training - absolutely. But forcing investment in super expensive legacy licenses is very inefficient.
It's now up to all the actors to find a way to make this work.
Apparently this didn't work as well in France as it did in the US.
Anywhere in the world you take money you are now engaged in commerce. And you have to follow the rules on commerce. Even the kid that delivers your pizza has to have auto insurance that covers delivery.
France doesn't have as many start-up guys and girls as you probably think and besides that they probably do not feel that uberpop is entirely without blame in how this all played out.
And if they start rioting they end up in jail.
Without a real, profitable business model, you won’t even get a loan from a bank here, not to talk about other investors.
Compliance with all the requirements, however, removes the economic advantage.
UberPOP is LEGAL in France, nobody has shut down UberPOP.
HOWEVER :
- A driver who wants to drive for UberPOP can do that, BUT it has to follow the french laws which means: paying a specific amount of taxes on their revenue, getting a 250 hours training, paying for a specific insurance
Of course, driving legally for UberPOP in France IS NOT PROFITABLE at all.
Uber can't have it both ways. It cannot fix prices for rides and expect legal drivers to work and make a profit with these prices.
Other services such as private limousines can continue, they are legal, as long as drivers operate legally.
UberPOP business model cannot work in France. But they are free to provide and distribute their app. The app is legal.
But if you hire a chauffeur (with his car), he needs to have the proper insurance to cover him and its passenger. Uber drivers actually must and have subscribed to them.
The issue with Uberpop is that most of its drivers don't have subscribed to that special insurance, and as a results are pushing the cost to everyone else.
As a regular driver, I would be quite unhappy if there was like 50k+ plus Uberpop driving all day long full of passengers, and if they were paying the same amount of money than an occasional driver, while being much more likely to have costly crashes.
Hence the reason to require that UberPop drivers have a proper transportation insurance in the first place.
Aside of any fairness, or legacy medallion system consideration, it is just a bad idea economically to have everyone paying higher insurance costs so that UberPop can reap all the benefits...
More long term uber shares a lot of similarities to napster. The music industry was never able to unscramble the egg after napster and the taxi industry is in the same position. Of course if you are an investor in uber your investment probably has the same long term value as napster.
We should get rid of the old system, but we cannot simply tell the people who invested 100,000+ Euros into a license that it's just become worthless. Should those people just kill themselves?
From [1]: "We have decided to suspend UberPOP starting tonight [...] first and foremost to protect our drivers ." - Thibaud Simphal, CEO Uber France
Translation: "this is supposed to be a developed country with the rule of law, but the police is not capable of doing its job (or willing), so we're giving up".
Another pearl: "Since the first of January, only 215 new VTC [licenses for private cars, the so called "legal" way of becoming an UberX] licenses were given out in the whole of France, even though during the same period, we had over 25,000 applicants at Uber to become a VTC driver."
That's a 0.86% success rate. I'm sure those 215 cars were the absolute limit the market (of ~60 million inhabitants, with 400,000 passengers already using UberPOP) could bear and that the decision is not at all politically motivated.
[1] http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2015/07/03/uber-annon...