In my opinion, the government and the ride hailing companies should have bought back a share of the taxi permit pool value, then cancelled them. It would have been costly, but by taxing the ride themselves (at a fixed rate) then letting competition drive the ride price down while increasing the ride volume. The government could have had their money back, eventually. Uber technically owe "theoretical tax money" since they operated without permit in a regulated industry. They had said at some point they didn't care about paying that back, so it would have been a better solution. After that, the regulations could have been lifted/relaxed.
The current deal isn't very good, but at least there is one. Technically, with self driving and automation (including apps), a lot of people will lose their job, so obviously they will resist changes, any changes. We can complain all we want as developers, but from the taxi driver point of view, change suck. Then again, in my opinion, so does regulation. One positive point, at least, is that this saga allowed time for discussions and consideration. A abrupt disruption would maybe have destabilized the industry too fast, while the time it took for this law to be passed allowed for the creation of a "middle market" where new taxis companies managed to enter the industry with hybrid solutions (including one Tesla/Leaf + app company) and the "dinosaurs" had time to [try to] adapt [and fail]. In the end, this did create more competition instead of players being pushed out and replaced by less players. There will be a market consolidation eventually anyway, but until that, the users will be the real winners.
Time will tell. I am still not convinced this law was the right call, but appreciated the debate.
Automation will work if and only if car operator can make themselves non liable for any accident resulting from bugs.
Accident are stuffs that cannot be predicted. A bug is something that can be avoided.
As far as I am concerned, 99% of the software industry is not able to write critical software that is able to handle with a correct costs the case of failures and/or "abnormal" behaviors.
Software will fail. It will eventually fail dramatically. And with software it can fail in a reproducible way. Nowadays all experiments are made far from worst case (congestion, interferences, extreme conditions....)
Who is gonna pay for the predictable accidents? And will self driving cars will be better at avoiding accidents than humman given a same operating cost on the long term?
Well, they have been involved in quite a few regulation tricks to not pay their due or cheat on customers (especially on forgetting to give life insurance prime). I would not take insurance company as an example of mathematical honest success in predicting the future.
And, also, I would point out that their prediction are based on opacity and it is hard to audit their reasoning. I talked with some of them, and their mathematical reasoning are flawed towards using linear equations to predict non linear phenomenon. And when I ask them how it can work, they had no explanations, just "recipies everyone use". So well, I do not trust them.
What you cannot explain simply you do not understand.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/uber-quebec-deal-1.36...
In my opinion, the government and the ride hailing companies should have bought back a share of the taxi permit pool value, then cancelled them. It would have been costly, but by taxing the ride themselves (at a fixed rate) then letting competition drive the ride price down while increasing the ride volume. The government could have had their money back, eventually. Uber technically owe "theoretical tax money" since they operated without permit in a regulated industry. They had said at some point they didn't care about paying that back, so it would have been a better solution. After that, the regulations could have been lifted/relaxed.
The current deal isn't very good, but at least there is one. Technically, with self driving and automation (including apps), a lot of people will lose their job, so obviously they will resist changes, any changes. We can complain all we want as developers, but from the taxi driver point of view, change suck. Then again, in my opinion, so does regulation. One positive point, at least, is that this saga allowed time for discussions and consideration. A abrupt disruption would maybe have destabilized the industry too fast, while the time it took for this law to be passed allowed for the creation of a "middle market" where new taxis companies managed to enter the industry with hybrid solutions (including one Tesla/Leaf + app company) and the "dinosaurs" had time to [try to] adapt [and fail]. In the end, this did create more competition instead of players being pushed out and replaced by less players. There will be a market consolidation eventually anyway, but until that, the users will be the real winners.
Time will tell. I am still not convinced this law was the right call, but appreciated the debate.