Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

what exactly did this guy say? I can't track it down anywhere, just reactions to it.

fuck these services

no way in hell am I entrusting the lives of my children with some unlicensed uninsured asshole with a handlebar mustache

A pink handlebar mustache pasted to the front of his car, even.

had way more shady shit pulled on me by cab drivers than i have ever received while using uber/lyft.

^

lol shakey wtf are you talking about unlicensed uninsured

Ubs has been pretty good to me except the multiplier suxxxxxxxx

THe uber app is also pretty awful it's like a videogame interface

I mean the #aesthetics

uber means never having to find a dd / leaving my car somewhere distant if im out and alcohol becomes a factor. plus reduction in such stressors as finding parking v valet etc. it's pretty much the best. i never fuck w lyft or whatever else tho

tax the hell out of these people and do more buses / trains at all hours in cities that aren't new york ffs. i get how it's better than cabs for the customer but it's not solving any other problems and libertarians are wrong abt this shit being inherently good. it was totally galling to see a "fb friend" share a "petition" to keep lyft legal in my city, like ok fine it's very weird and hypocritical how this place is "pro-business" only if it jibes with a religious cult, but on the other hand, if trax ran until 2 here, drunk driving is addressed, less drivers on the road is addressed (we have the biggest smog problem in the country), suddenly you might have a night life, etc.

miateesslessness

I don't think you should be opposed to expanding the market for taxis if you want to stop drunk driving and make it easier to live w/o a car

these companies are pretty clearly run by terrible people but so are taxi cartels

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/668CE98E-0A61-406E-87E5-546157F4E18C.png_zpshjrvwiti.jpeg

Legit terrifying

lol shakey wtf are you talking about unlicensed uninsured

― ✓ out this insane nakh yall (gr8080), Tuesday, November 18, 2014 11:57 AM (5 days ago)

these drivers tend to only be insured for personal travel -- not for transporting passengers for money.

http://blog.uber.com/ridesharinginsurance

i was thinking of lyft -- not sure about shakey

https://www.lyft.com/safety

personally, it just seems like there's too overwhelming a douche factor involved with using these services, but i felt that way about cell phones in the late 90s/early 00's

i agree with matt though about regulating and taxing these things -- same with Air BnB

sarahell, what's your opinion about the types of insurance the drivers for these companies carry?

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20141122/lakeview/cyclist-struck-by-two-cars-on-lake-shore-drive-early-saturday-police

Awful situation but wondering how the insurance stuff may shake out here with the Uber driver.

http://www.policygenius.com/blog/insurance-secret-uber-doesnt-want-know/

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Leaked-transcript-shows-Geico-s-stance-against-5910113.php

I took UberX a few times recently just to try it out (once when we didn't have our car and needed to get somewhere), here are my thoughts:

1) From work (midtown manhattan) to home it was exactly the same price as a regular yellowcab, and unlike the yellowcab the uber guy didn't gun it and didn't take what I know to be the fastest route, so not doing it again from work
2) From my neighborhood, however, it was great -- car services around here suck and often just tell you they don't have someone available, whereas uber had a guy with a car seat her in five minutes.
3) However, they charged about 30% extra for the car seat, which seemed kind of ridiculous
4) I was annoyed at how unclear it was how much it was going to cost -- the first time I specifically got the fare estimate, but the second time I somehow missed it, and once you pass that there doesn't seem to be any meter or anything else telling you how much you're paying and why
5) Uber is just the douchiest name ever, and their logo looks like something out of Robocop
6) All three Uber drivers I had were professional drivers who had previously driven for black car services so the "ridesharing" thing is nonsense
7) Ultimately yeah there is a douchey vibe to the whole thing -- you can even hook up your spotify account to the driver's stereo so you're the fucking DJ in your uber while you do lines off a hooker's ass or whatever
8) The cars were all very nice, though almost pointlessly so -- the "family" one we got was a Toyota Avalon hybrid, and the one that took me home from work was some monstrosity luxury SUV

TL;DR, I'll probably use it again in my neighborhood just because cabs and car services are so difficult, but otherwise it has no major appeal for me over a regular cab, and I barely ever take cabs anyway

Also, one of the drivers told me "Last year, it was great, I made good money and I could work a normal day and go home. Now they cut the rates and I have to work 15 hours to make the same money I made in 8"

my friend is a Lyft driver & she said basically the same thing -- she's driving for both to try to make up the shortfall

I still dont think I understand whats better about Uber (or what was percieved to be) than taxis. Here in Melb we can order a proper taxi with iphone apps as well as by calling or hailing on the street; you can pay by card (credit or debit) on proper wifi connected machines in all the taxis, and its reasonably cheap.

Is it something else that makes uber better? Cant be the price from what im reading here.

There are some cities in the US where the cab system really doesn't work well, and I think San Francisco is one of these.

Trayce, in NYC we mostly have a pretty good yellowcab system and black car car services make up the difference, but there are places like my neighborhood where it's still difficult to find any kind of cab. I also don't think you can hail regular taxis by smartphone app right now in NYC but not sure. Beyond that though, the improvements are not huge -- the cars are a little nicer (in my three experiences) but modern NYC cabs tend to be well-maintained, clean, up-to-date cars. I guess the choice of music thing is sort of neat but I didn't use it because it seemed assholish. I do like the fact that there are so many uber drivers with carseats ready - I don't think regular cabs ever have this.

But yeah there are cities with poor cab service. My brother in LA says everyone there uses Uber because both public transit and cabs are not great there.

But yeah, taxis are so different in different cities that I think there's a lot of yawning gaps of incomprehension -- people in cities with good taxis say "what is the point of this" and people in cities with crap taxis say "how are you not using this"

Similarly -- I think Uber-like services are really well-adapted for the use case of "it's 3am and I'm drunk at a bar whose street address I don't know and I need to get home and I don't live in a city where cabs are just driving by all the time" -- I think this is the kind of situation most people are either in reasonably often (in which case they're in the "how can you not use this" camp) or basically never (in which case "what is the point of this.")

e.g. someone whose typical use of a taxi is "I'm out of town for work and I need to get from my hotel to the airport" (e.g me) seldom to never encounters the situation where this service would be useful.

Yeah makes sense.

Lest it be thought btw that Melb's taxi system is *good*, it kind of isnt, but for other reasons (very large majority of the drivers are very recent immigrants who have absolutely no idea where they are going; lot of cleanliness issues, abusive/rude drivers etc)

Some people have told me they had luck hailing Ubers at the airport when the taxi line was really long, but if enough people start doing that it will also be hard to hail Ubers at the airport I assume.

is über just for rich ppl who don't want middle eastern cabbies or is my impression off?

the uber drivers I had were all middle eastern or central asian

One thing I did notice, I think the drivers were a little more reticent about chatting with us, even when I engaged them a bit, and that may be because of fear of bad ratings if they say the wrong thing. This felt a little off to me.

it amazes me that nouveau tech people are so credulous as to willingly throw away decades of accumulated consumer protections and regulations for the novelty of calling an unlicensed cab with an iphone app.

― adam, Wednesday, April 23, 2014 5:33 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

in Chicago ubers are banned from doing airport pickups (drop offs are fine)

xp isnt the essential appeal (beyond availability/speed etc depending on ur area) how it feels like the opposite tho? - like ppl find a kind of superficial airless safety in being machine processed by this abstract "system" rather than having to deal with the nebulous fallibilities of their own human initiative interaction etc. like hurting says it's like ocp running johnny cabs only cos the android tech isnt there yet so they have to subjugate actual driver persons

Yeah in fact I had almost that exact same thought - that this feels like an intermediate step toward automated cabs

I dislike Uber's upper management as much as anyone, but have used the service numerous times in the bay area and it's inexpensive, easy, and the drivers I've had have always been perfectly nice. Taxi's have refused to drive me from BART to the house with luggage because it's not far enough.

If you're willing to pay the multiplier Uber is great during a rainy day when it is impossible to catch a cab

How much is the multiplier. It's exceedingly rare that I'd be in that situation -- only time I take cabs in Manhattan is when I leave the office very very late.

I'd really take the subway any time except my train often either doesn't run or runs very very infrequently and only local after certain hours.

It varies according to how high the demand is

For me it was 2.2 then 2.0

There was that story of the woman who was charged $320 because it was like a 7x multiplier on Halloween and she didn't know

i opened uber in the middle of a blizzard in Manhattan around 10pm the Saturday before Xmas last year and the multiplier was around 7.5x

When the multiplier is in effect does it flash big on the screen? Like is it plausible that that woman could have missed it?

Good article on how Uber's business model has changed and the dawn of the robotaxi

https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/07/uber_driver_waymo/?td=rt-3a

classic piece https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/06/lyft-reinvents-the-bus.html

I remember there was that window around 2019 where the rides were super cheap. You could get from Manhattan to Brooklyn for less than $5

Has anyone ever had a phantom Lyft request? I got notifications that a driver had arrived to pick me up for a ride I never requested -- I hadn't even opened the app in about three weeks.