[eksith]

And this, folks, is why taxi regulation is a thing. Of course, there is crime and corruption and they have their own variety of scams[1]. But what you won't see is a sweeping sense of impunity because if you go out of bounds to this degree so blatantly (and at regular intervals, it seems), a rather large hammer will come down on you and your union. Taxi drivers in general are well aware of this.

But a bunch of broexecs, who answer to no one, setting the tone for everyone else is unlikely to feel any need to change any time soon.

[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/tlc-22-000-cab-drivers-p...

[nemothekid]

So taxi regulations are in place to ensure faceless execs don't make mean remarks? Uber might not be startup of the month right now, but given the choice of excellent service for customers at the cost of a couple assholes in a boardroom somewhere versus crappy service while the execs try to please everyone, I'd choose excellent service every time. Ignoring the fact that, of course, taxi regulations don't stop people from being assholes; after all it has never stopped drivers from not picking up minorities.

[eksith]

No, taxi regulations are in place so this kind of nonsense gets your license revoked: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-play...

[comrh]

I think regulations have more to do with the drivers not taking you on 20 mile detours, trying to sexually assault or yelling at a cancer patient (all Uber stories).

[kjksf]

So you have 3 stories about Uber.

How about 1733 complaints against taxi drivers in 1 year in San Francisco alone? https://www.baycitizen.org/news/transportation/cab-complaint...

"San Francisco taxi drivers routinely flout the law by refusing rides, declining to take credit cards, charging unauthorized fees, speeding, smoking, and talking and texting on cellphones while driving, according to a year’s worth of passenger complaints reviewed by The Bay Citizen."

How many of those drivers lost their license, do you think?

[comrh]

I was giving examples, it certainly isn't an exhaustive list. How many complaints against Uber in a year? We don't know because there isn't any regulator oversight besides trusting Uber.

[prawn]

To be fair, there would be countless equivalent stories from the taxi side of the fence. The ability to rate drivers to encourage better service strikes me as one thing Uber gets right.

There might be bad attitudes filtering down from the top and from handlers/motivators, but that's less about regulations and more about just being nice people. Taxi drivers could often do with the same improvement.

[girvo]

And all taxi stories. Seriously, you think they're immune to stuff like that?

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/taxi-driver-se...

http://www.ksbw.com/news/central-california/santa-cruz/santa...

Rude taxi drivers and huge detours to charge you more money are par for the course when it comes to taxis. Regulation doesn't fix this. I'm not sure what does, really.

[comrh]

I never said they were immune... I was merely pointing out that there is a lack of regulation. There is no taxi commission to go to if Uber screws you.

[moab]

I think what'll come out of this entire experiment is something very, very similar to the current taxi industry - simply with better apps and dependability, and I will not complain at all. A little part of me suspects that this will not be Uber (at least in America, where the regulatory blockade feels really impenetrable as an engineer), although at this point it's anyones game.

[eksith]

My honest hope when I first heard of Uber was that it would give a huge wakeup call to the industry. Let's face it, America is a service industry and many of its services suck. The attitude is marginal at best, horrifying at worst. I hoped this level of customer scrutiny on performance would bring it up to the same level as in Japan.

I'm still hoping someone will make it happen. Or rather, perhaps an entire army of services will make it happen as we've seen, a de facto monopoly, yields terrible results.

[moab]

Your point reminds me of that recent New Yorker article on learning [1]. In particular, the author points out how particularly niche industries (competitive sports, theatre, orchestras) have seen significant improvements in median performance over the past few decades. However, this has been limited mostly to fields where there are a small number of potential openings and a pool of candidates significantly larger than the number of openings. One of the big questions I think about sometimes is how America can push its citizens and employees to be a little more disciplined/dedicated (ahh not exactly clear how to phrase that..) purely through economic manipulation (and not cultural impetus a la Japan).

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/better-time

[eksith]

That was a fantastic article! Thanks for linking that. It certainly gave me a lot of food for thought.

[krrrh]

Über's ran into legal problems in Germany, but a city like Berlin has a very same regulatory system. Taxi licenses are available at a reasonable processing charge, drivers have to be licensed for driving skill and commercially insured, and the majority of drivers are single or a few car small businesses. Also, the cars are plentiful, inexpensive, clean and modern (there's some variery, but a random hail will usually net a Mercedes with leather seats). It's mostly what Uber says they want, except that if they play by the sensible rules here then they don't have any competitive edge.

There are multiple apps like mytaxi which add a layer of usability, estimated pick up time and cost, pay from app, interactive maps, and driver rating.

[prawn]

Why haven't taxi companies done this themselves to see off the upstart competitors?

[moab]

Probably because taxi companies are a dime-a-dozen across various cities and states, and the capital required for an engineering investment to pull something like this off just isn't there at any given shop. It's a technology problem that the existing industry faces, and because the existing competition is essentially a coalition of independent companies, they can't band together to build something like this without a joined effort (nigh impossible).

I was recently in Pittsburgh and saw a clunky touch-screen app stuck to the back of the passenger seat that sounded just like Uber, so it's clear that someone out there is working on building Uber-like dependability for your taxi. But I also remember talking to the cab-driver on that trip, and having him tell me that their 'dispatch' is still one person sitting in an office somewhere manually dialing and dispatching cabs to received calls. The status quo in the industry is just so ancient in so many ways. Here's to hoping they can start moving and respond though.

[mrow84]

Probably because it would be expensive and risky to roll out something across a large, already existing network, but at the same time running an innovative "side project" may well be met by anxiety (and corresponding resistance) by those who aren't able to participate. It seems to me that both of these responses are fairly economically rational, given the corresponding risks.

Regulation could be useful here, if properly designed, by helping to alleviate the fears of those in the existing industry who are most likely to be directly affected by these useful innovations. Unfortunately, the allergic political response of some sectors of society to anything interventionist makes coming to reasonable arrangements quite difficult, so we just end up with something that isn't really that great for anyone.

[gonzi25]

The Taxi drivers in Seattle protested by blocking downtown traffic in their cabs on multiple occasions when the Uber/Lyft vote was going on. Uber and Lyft are now capped at 150 cars each.