[salawat]

>Yet, taxis in Colombia are incredibly dangerous...drive unsafely in cars that don't meet any security guidelines (a large number of passengers have died on rear-collisions given that the most common Bogota taxi has no rear-reinforcement).

This doesn't follow for me. Most Uber drivers drive their own cars, no? That means the cars are the same as are sold in the country, which given the regulated taxi companies are using supposedly less safe version of fleet vehicles sounds a lot to me like a country specific problem with lax regulations on fleet vehicle specifications.

Unless Uber is also making available U.S. market/road legal cars available to drivers in Colombia too.

I don't know squat about the regulatory framework in Colombia though. So I could be totally wrong based on the flawed assumption on how extensive this "taxi mafia's" regulatory capture purportedly is.

[repomies691]

The thing with Uber is the reputation system. It makes it much more profitable for the driver behave well. Traditional taxi system doesn't have that. In a big city, you can scam customers all day long and be pretty sure that you won't meet those people again.

[TsomArp]

No. To be an Uber driver you are required to have a better car than what is (practically) required to drive a taxi: newer, clean, etc. Plus the reputation system makes it more difficult to not comply.