[Elessar]

Taxi regulation for safety reasons increases the trust in taxis for people that don't know the area: tourists.

Harp about personal freedom and responsibility of the state all you want, but the regulation is for people that don't know the area and could get hurt by stepping into the wrong car. Because when the day occurs that a tourist is kidnapped or hurt because of this service, it will ruin the local industry. Uber may not care about the locals once it is sufficiently global (what's one city?), but the municipality does and this is precisely the reason why they're stepping in.

[icebraining]

State regulation didn't seem to stop Gurmeet Singh, licensed NYC cab driver, from kidnapping and raping a woman just a couple of months ago.

Regulations are not magic, they can't tell if someone is a rapist. All they can do is check the criminal records, which Uber also does[1].

[1] http://blog.uber.com/driverscreening

[NotOscarWilde]

So you believe there should be taxi services which can skip the background check but otherwise can have their cars look like any other taxi service?

Uber may do the checks voluntarily, but having no regulation means you wish for a company that can refuse to do so.

[icebraining]

I think generic laws/jurisprudence that, in a court, would find those companies guilty of negligence (and heavily punish them) if they hadn't performed standard checks before hiring[1], would be more than enough to convince every company to check.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence_in_employment