I live in Boston. Until uber, the minimum taxi fair was $6, they always had broken credit card machines, and there was never enough cabs when you needed them. I remember s New Year's Eve where we had to promise the dispatcher we would pay a $100 tip to get anyone to pick us up. The "reducing drunk driving" theory was a happy side effect but ultimately not important. Über destroyed a a BS industry full of idiots and made it professional and reliable.
Out of curiosity, did you end up tipping $100? I feel like a taxi driver's job is to pick up people at a set rate and they forced you into promising the $100 because you knew otherwise they wouldn't do that job. Curious on your view.
I lived in Cambridge for eight years (moved last summer) and never experienced anything remotely like this. I lived on Prospect Street right near Central Sq, and frequently took taxis around the area.
I called ahead to have taxis pick me up for early morning rides to the airport, and they were always early and helped me with my bags. I took taxis over to the Boston College area when I was taking music lessons at a studio there. I took taxis home from sports events and concerts near Fenway. Even when coming out of a crowded show at House of Blues, it was a short wait for taxis.
I never once experienced a broken credit card machine. I once did ask a driver if they accepted credit cards, he said no, and I waited about 30 seconds for the next taxi to come by -- on a side street on the Somerville side of Porter Sq, so not even close to usual taxi spots.
Getting taxis in Boston is cheap, safe, and reliable, with pretty short wait times, easy to deal with dispatchers, drivers who show up on time, cars that are clean and 99.999% of the time have functioning credit card machines.
I honestly don't know what on earth you're talking about.
None of this is an argument against Uber anyway, because people use Uber for features that even good taxis don't have, including price reduction, better real-time tracking, an app interface, and other things. And Uber drivers certainly can do things worse than taxis -- such as simply fail to show up, treat you rudely during the ride, or try to make you exit the car in an inconvenient/unsafe spot of the street at your destination. Uber is not intrinsically better about this kind of thing than taxis.
But some things you absolutely cannot say, at least about taxis in the Boston area, are that they are anything but clean, safe, reliable, punctual, and able to take your credit card.
Well, this is why we have anecdotes I suppose. I lived in Boston and Brookline for twelve years as well and find your claims equally laughable.
We quite frequently found ourselves in cabs with credit card readers, only to be told they didn't work when it came time to pay. I also simply gave up using cabs trying to get to Logan because while they would usually be on time, there were others when they simply wouldn't show up at all. Now you're under the gun to find a ride - not sure if they're late or just not coming.
All I can say is that while I believe you when you say these things (I have no reason to think you'd lie to make a point), I also think you've simply lived a very charmed life when it comes to taxi service in Massachusetts.
The fact is, the taxis in Boston had very little reason to improve their service prior to competition from Uber. Now they're being forced to adapt to survive.
I'm a big fan of Uber, but the secret to dealing with cabbies is to be firm and obstinate. Like any street business, they're going to take advantage when they smell weakness and fold when they sense strength. Credit card machine doesn't work? Okay, here's the address where you can send me the bill. Don't try to stop me from leaving the cab, it'll be a big mistake involving police and you getting arrested for false imprisonment. Another thing I've done to much success is negotiate the fare to the destination up front, which prevents problems at the other end. Always remember that possession is nine-tenths of the law and that as long as you're in possession of the money, you're in the position of power. And when you act as such, you'll get more respect from the cabbies to begin with.
Given that I easily rode in a hundred taxis all over Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and Chestnut Hill, it would be extremely statistically unlikely that I just happened to get only the far above average good experiences each time.
The anecdote I described also matches the general experiences of all my friends and family as well, with occasional outliers (both good and bad), so I feel very confident in saying that an average case taxi ride anywhere in the Boston area involves a clean, modern taxi, polite driver, properly functioning credit card machine, a short wait (and no wait at all if you call the dispatcher ahead).
Yes, of course there is variance and sometimes people will have a worse experience. Those worse experiences are very rare, and the taxi services overall are very good the vast majority of the time.
No, I wasn't kidding. My cab experiences in Boston, going back to 2008, well before any Uber competition can apply, have always been good -- perfectly normal with no serious complaints. I'm not saying the cab drivers poured me a glass of champagne or something, just that they had clean, newer cars with functioning card readers, they were on time, and I didn't stand in very long lines except a few times at the airport.
It is very telling that when a person describes his taxis experiences in a super boring, uncontroversial and simple manner: i.e. that the taxis are just normal cars with credit card readers and you should expect a perfectly normal experience if you get in one -- then everyone here acts like I'm giving some kind of gushing, outrageous praise to taxis, and acts indignant that I don't describe taxis as basically the car Fred Flintstone drove but with killer bees inside.
It's crazy that people are so adamant to do social engineering for Uber that they won't even agree to entirely uncontroversial claims, like most taxis in Boston are clean or have functioning card readers -- things which are indisputably accurate.
I'm not saying you should dislike Uber. I'm not saying you should ride in a taxi. I'm not saying the taxi services are perfect. I'm not saying there are zero bad taxi experiences.
I'm only saying that most taxi experiences in Boston are perfectly uneventful, normal rides that completely meet the expectation of the riders, and don't suffer from the hyperbolic criticisms here.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. It's the first I've ever heard of a satisfied taxi customer in Boston but I'm glad to hear there's at least one!
It's not just me though. Dozens of friends, family members, classmates, and coworkers all described the same experiences I've had whenever the topic came up.
The average-case taxi ride in Boston is quite good.
I have never seen a clean taxi except once, and also 80% of drivers had broken machines and took me to ATMs instead. One guy even had his own square reader, which I thought was nifty. But the best part was discovering that our new home address was blacklisted by taxis due to previous occupants shenanigans. Thank god Uber came and smashed them into the ground.
More than one taxi is clean. Fewer than 80% of taxi card readers are broken. No one will believe your claim of being blacklisted unless you give proof, and taxi services have hardly been "smashed into the ground" by Uber. I continue to enjoy using taxis in every urban area I travel to, and look forward to the way taxis keep competition pressure high for Uber by adopting various changes to make their level of service indistinguishable in the new ways that customers have enjoyed using Uber.
No, the taxi services (in Boston, anyway, which qualifies all of my comments) have an average-to-good reputation. Uber tries to steer opinion against it, but since people have perfectly fine experiences with taxis most of the time, that doesn't work.
Also, there is no singular reputation that represents all taxi services. Your idea that all taxi services have a bad reputation only further makes your argument unbelievable. A mom & pop business operating a few taxis in a small suburb is way different than a highly regulated city taxi service competing for medallions. Taxis in some cities are always good, while in other cities they are always bad. Taxis in some countries aren't regulated well enough, making them unsafe, but then in others they are regulated and safe.
"The taxi industry" is (mostly) just a fiction that Uber enthusiasts make up. It certainly is when it comes to taxi service reputations, which vary locally.
> But some things you absolutely cannot say, at least about taxis in the Boston area, are that they are anything but clean, safe, reliable, punctual, and able to take your credit card.
Safe, sure, to the best of my knowledge. Clean? Nuh-uh. Punctual? Nuh-uh. Able to take my credit card? Maybe 50% of the time. "It's broken," and suddenly it's not broken when I shrug and get out of the car.
And with one exception (a dedicated airport service), every dispatcher I ever dealt with was at best a prick. The only time I use taxis now is departing Logan, where I have no choice because they banned Ubers.
If these are your experiences, then your experiences seem to be very different than the average case, especially the 50% non-functioning card reader experience.
While I'm sorry that you have had such bad experiences, since your experiences differ so much from what is common, I don't feel people should base their expectations on what you say.
Instead, you can be nearly certain that it will be a clean, modern taxi, with a functioning card reader, that arrives on time and doesn't require a long wait.
To be fair to Uber, you still can expect taxis to cost more and you still have to watch out for drivers who spot a sucker and take you the long way for a larger fare.
Taxis aren't perfect. But taxis also are not rusted out death traps of lateness with serial killers for drivers and credit card readers that make you sexually barren, as apparently the army of Uber social engineering commenters wants us to believe.
Ha. This was an odd thread to read, the averages just aren't averaging out.
Try living in Cape Town. Before Uber arrived here taxi drivers were straight up extortionists. I mean that in the literal sense. I used to have to pay anywhere for R100 to R150 minimum. Uber now averages about R50 - R60, and the experience is a pleasant one.
So with my other side of the world experiences in mind I can see how something similar might happen elsewhere, such as Boston.
No that's what knee-jerk Uber defenders are writing who refuse to grant taxis any credit for being good, useful services.
These responses aren't reporting average case experiences with level headed analysis.
They are just one-sidedly saying everything is bad about taxis, including "corruption" even, and how thankful they are Uber "disrupted" them, etc.
It all reads very much like paid social engineering by Uber. I'm sure that's not it, and they are just strong fans defending a company they like.
But the fact that it's all written just like social engineering spam us a good indication that it's not describing realistic, average-case experiences of most taxi users.
So responsible people are trading Yellow taxis for Über and irresponsible people are still driving while intoxicated. Or, alternatively, the amount of drunk drivers is so huge that whatever number taxis and Uber take off the streets is negligible in relative numbers.
But ride services want to promulgate the idea to cities they bring safety in order to counterbalance the annoyed voices of the yellow cabs decrying the conditions the ride service drivers must endure...
"Researchers... looked at the 100 most populated metropolitan areas, analyzing data from before and after the introduction of Uber and its competitors"
Fair inquiry, but no. They studied the top 100 metro areas, not the Podunks. Now, it does not say whether the rate has remained steady despite, perhaps, an increase in people who now feel comfortable getting drunk cuz they can get a cab fairly easily with the intro of ride services. However, they have not decreased the totals, as they have claimed, according to the findings.
Uber doesn't launch in areas where there isn't a market. If there is no need for extensive taxi and mass transit services, Uber won't be there either.
I maintain that Uber is just another option in the top 100 metro areas. If Uber did work everywhere, then I am sure you would see reductions in places that do not have competing services.
No. As someone who has gotten a DWI in one of the largest cities, I drove my car because I wanted to an was an irresponsible idiot, not because I had no options.
Or, the amount of drunk drivers is so small that whatever number Uber takes off the streets doesn't make a statistical bump. The p-value hit the threshold for DUIs and deaths, but not for alcohol-involved accidents.
From talking to Brits, I'm starting to think that the greater availability of alternatives to driving one's self home seems to increase drinking. The need to get home, to get one's car home, is a good reason not to drink. During university I rode a motorcycle to school/work and can say it kept me away from many an afternoon at a beer garden. London's nightlife, the serious drinking, can only exist because nobody has to drive themselves home.
So dropping Uber into a city, giving them another option for getting home, might increase the overall level of drinking. This would muddy the drink-driving numbers. For every drunk driven safely home by Uber there may be some other person out there pressured into having a drink that otherwise wouldn't. And some of them might drive.
Drinking is definitely more socially acceptable in Britain than the US, but that has more to do with differing history (no prohibition) than options for getting home.
Drink driving became socially unacceptable in Britain only in the last 20-30 years but alcohol consumption hasn't really changed. The anti drink driving ads on TV every Christmas were really quite hard hitting. I've seen nothing similar in the US.
It sounds like the null hypothesis is that Uber has not affected drunken driving deaths. Didn't the study just fail to disprove the null hypothesis, meaning that its result is meaningless and inconclusive?
It's worth reading the other report [1] the article cites — it's a lot more comprehensive than the author makes it out to be. The study didn't find a relationship between Uber and alcohol-involved accidents/fatalities (which the NPR article is about), but did find a statistically significant relationship between Uber, traffic fatalities, and DUIs. They also found that introducing Uber increases auto-theft.
Using a differences-in-differences specification, we find that fatal accident rates generally decline after the introduction of Uber. Specifically, in the unweighted regressions, we find that entry is associated with a 6 percent decline in the fatal accident rate. Fatal night-time crashes experience a slightly larger decline of 18 percent. In both the weighted and unweighted estimations, we also discover a continued decline in the overall fatal crash rate and the rate of vehicular fatalities for the months following the introduction of Uber. For each additional year of operation, Uber’s continued presence is associated with a 16.6 percent decline in vehicular fatalities.
...
Again employing a differences-in-differences specification, typically with county specific trends, we find a large and robust decline in the arrest rate for DUIs. Depending
upon specification, DUIs are 15 to 62 percent lower after the entry of Uber. The average annual rate of decline after the introduction of Uber is 51.3 percent per year for DUIs.
Classic case of proving the null hypothesis. The p-value hit the threshold for DUIs and deaths, but not for alcohol-involved accidents. If you're wondering why, here's a hint: the mean rate for alcohol-involved accidents was less than 1 in 100,000.
Why does it seem the media is so intent on tearing Uber down. There have been a lot of articles on HN about Uber is fucked, Uber is going down, Uber is doomed... Uber is really great. No, they don't pay their drivers enough. No, they don't do everything they can to ensure their drivers are responsible, and vetted. Yet they provide an invaluable service against a corrupt, entrenched industry that has needed a serious kick in the pants for as long as any of us have been alive. Uber has a lot of improvements to make, but I would rather have the option of choosing them over the corrupt taxi industry than not.
I'm suspicious. It seems the study may only be regressing on 'availability' of Uber – the single bit flag of whether it has launched in a city. If adoption is gradual, as the habits of drinkers/drivers change over months (or years), beneficial effects might not be seen by such a study, or remain hidden by all the other controls applied.
The best analysis would likely need to use ride volume data; there's no hint in this study's abstract they've done that, and the paper is paywalled.
Of course they only enter markets where there's demand. But it takes a while for people to understand and adopt something new as their preferred transit. Some initially view Uber/etc as weird, before later becoming big fans.
In San Francisco, it appears Uber/Lyft have massively increased the total number of paid-rides taken. They're not just shifting trips from taxis or public transit, but also from private car usage – and creating new trips where people would've just stayed in or walked.
That points out another stat a 'gold standard' study should try to identify: fatalities per trips (or ride-miles) taken, rather than just absolute number of fatalities. If cities with Uber have the same number of fatalities, but spread over twice as much travel, that's giant safety and welfare win, too.
I'm wondering if their thesis if off: is this due to where uber is rather than cost
Ie - suburban to exburban uber is just expensive and rare, (low coverage), and therefore people are more likely to drunk drive. I mean, how many taxis to start with are there in small suburban towns?
Maybe the group of people who drink and are responsible enough to call a Uber does not significantly overlaps with the group who drinks and are irresponsible enough to drive.
It seems like it should be clear if you read the definitions. Perhaps if you explain why you think it should be 'affect', you can get a better explanation.
Commonsense says this study is flawed in someway. Uber has giving millions and millions of car rides with drunk people, and how many of those wouldn't ride with a sober friend or take the time to call a cab?
Or perhaps the study says that common sense is flawed in some way? If the study holds up to scrutiny (not saying it will) then updating to have new common sense is the whole point.