Totally agree. Uber could come up with a quick way to do fingerprint background checks. Just have the driver, go through a drive-through background check stop. It might take 5 minutes, but I thought Uber & Lyft drivers had a short orientation anyway. Kill 2 birds.
After reading Josh Baer's article, I do agree with him that its a lot easier to point at a startup and say something is easy, without all the knowledge from the inside. I am sure there is a lot of data on why this is hard to do.
I do think that part of this boils down to liability. If a certain percentage of drivers are known offenders of some kind, Uber or Lyft could get sued for letting them remain on their platform.
Super sad to see Uber go. Its a great app. I use it almost daily. Reality hasn't set in yet.
Eh, it's not easy, and it's an artificial barrier to entry created by the government to enter the space. This has absolutely nothing to do with safety and everything to do with special interests (taxi companies) lobbying to keep competition out of the area.
I live in the area. Uber/Lyft have campaigned really aggressively. I've got stuff from them in the mail, they contacted me at my unlisted cell, they've been canvassing hard for months. I've never even seen an "anti" ad.
The "pro" Uber/Lyft PAC spent north of $8m, while the "anti" PAC spent 1/40th of that [0]. This is by far the most money ever spent on any election in this city's history, by a factor of about 5. And all of it is Silicon Valley money, which is just weird.
Quite frankly I have no idea whether the regulatory reforms Uber/Lyft wanted were sensible or not. I don't know whether they were really necessary for Uber/Lyft to continue operations or not. I just know a bunch of SV investors spent an absurd amount of money trying to convince everybody of that, and Austinites are a very skeptical bunch who decided not to take their terms.
Well if we want to match anecdotes, I live in the area and have only seen "anti" campaigning. FWIW, I'm in North Austin, where it turns out the opposition apparently did really well.
> Quite frankly I have no idea whether the regulatory reforms Uber/Lyft wanted were sensible or not. [...] SV investors spent an absurd amount of money trying to convince everybody of that, and Austinites are a very skeptical bunch who decided not to take their terms.
I think this is a weird characterization, to the point where your bias is showing. Both your comments and the article you link to make it seem as if the ridesharing startups launched an underhanded campaign in order to change the status quo to suit themselves. But that's not the case.
The reality is that regulatory changes to specifically target Uber and Lyft were adopted months ago, those companies reacted by saying, "WTF WTF let's not do this", managed to bring it to a special election to get the city to reconsider the new regulations, and that attempt failed.
I find your own comments as well as the articles that try to focus on storytelling to be the ones that rely the most on readers who aren't entirely sure of what's going on. Speak some reassuring words that suggest to the confused reader, "someone's trying to pull the wool over your eyes; voting <this way> would show them it can't be done!", spin some yarn about companies trying to buy their way into deregulation to benefit their bottom line, and that's how you win a campaign to use the law to get the ridesharing companies in question to go away and preserve cab companies' customer base.
Getting mailers does not at all mean you have lobbying power, and even spending large sums of money on a campaign doesn't mean you have lobbying power. Often times power comes from who you know. Uber and Lyft are not local like cab companies, so they have no local precedent or representation in local governments. People have this Aaron Sorkin view of government lobbying where dropping dollars from helicopters can get you anything, that is patently false, even in DC.
Look up "regulatory capture," a Nobel was won because of it. It's exactly what's happening here.
I believe access to your number is one of the permissions the app requests, so it was probably already on file for all who have installed the app in that geolocation.
After reading Josh Baer's article, I do agree with him that its a lot easier to point at a startup and say something is easy, without all the knowledge from the inside. I am sure there is a lot of data on why this is hard to do.
I do think that part of this boils down to liability. If a certain percentage of drivers are known offenders of some kind, Uber or Lyft could get sued for letting them remain on their platform.
Super sad to see Uber go. Its a great app. I use it almost daily. Reality hasn't set in yet.