Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 208 posts

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#81

Post by SilasX »

sailfast wrote: post #57

This article is positioned like Uber / Jump can argue the matter and/or have leverage. Additional comments here act like Uber should be able to operate as they want. They do not and cannot. In order to operate legally as a business in a locality, you have to obey the law. If that law is sharing your data, you've gotta figure out a way to do that, or not operate. Figure out a privacy notice for your LA Riders and add…

I agree Uber should try to find a way to satisfy the intent of the law, but you're basically saying that everyone should blindly obey every law or not operate. That's way too strong a principle to lean on. I could do a word swap on your very comment and turn it into a defense of e.g. Jim Crow laws.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#82

Post by pmoriarty »

alistairSH wrote: post #30
_8j50 wrote: post #23

Why GPS? Why not low tech transponders? They're precise enough to help you locate a scooter but too imprecise for navigation or tracking the exact path someone took. Especially if they don't ping frequently.

Partly because some cities have no-ride zones where scooters and bikes are banned outright or supposed to be speed limited. The boardwalks in some CA cities fall into this category. You can ride in the street parallel at whatever speed you want. But on the boardwalk, you're capped at X mph (usually Yes, the city could just use traffic enforcement to issue tickets. But, I'm inclined to have software enforcement and no…

Ok, but why does a scooter have to send any position data out to accomplish this?

Why couldn't a scooter just figure out its own position and limit its own speed if it's on a boardwalk?

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#83

Post by sokamyung »

sailfast wrote: post #57

This article is positioned like Uber / Jump can argue the matter and/or have leverage. Additional comments here act like Uber should be able to operate as they want. They do not and cannot. In order to operate legally as a business in a locality, you have to obey the law. If that law is sharing your data, you've gotta figure out a way to do that, or not operate. Figure out a privacy notice for your LA Riders and add…

It is ironic that you bring up the law, because the law … which supersedes any law produced by a wannabe feudal fiefdom like LA, is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated". Please note the "shall not be violated", which is a critical point that is missed about the Bill of Rights in particular, that this right that is referenced in the 4th Amendment is a natural, God given right, which the 4th Amendment prohibits the government from, in this case, violating, or, in other amendments infringing on.

It is seemingly often if not always overlooked that the Bill of Rights it not actually a bill of rights at all, it is a bill of prohibitions on the government, or a bill of rights by negation of offenses against them. From what I can tell, that notion of negative rights, i.e., open ended rights bound by the prohibition of government from violating them, is singularly unique in the whole world.

I would appreciate if someone could point out an example of them same, especially as part of the most fundamental law that governs a state, which even supersede the Constitution itself, a kind of meta-Constitution; natural, God given law that supersedes all Constitutional rights and all powers of government.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#84

Post by sailfast »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #79
sailfast wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and I don’t necessarily agree with the real-time requirement as the best way to regulate. That said, while the data providing burden is certainly more than the liquor store must provide, it doesn’t seem like they’ve delayed permitting for months, requiring public notice, checking to ensure named individuals are at work, etc (not to mention some of the graft that has been associated with liquor licenses in oth…

Uber appears to be claiming some kind of procedural issues happened here. They mentioned an "eleventh-hour administrative review process" in the article, although I don't have time right now to dig in and find more details on what they're talking about.

Yeah - checking on the overall policies for LADOT as well and their data API but only so deep you can go when it’s not your day job haha. Appreciate the discussion!

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#85

Post by chimi »

sailfast wrote: post #57

This article is positioned like Uber / Jump can argue the matter and/or have leverage. Additional comments here act like Uber should be able to operate as they want. They do not and cannot. In order to operate legally as a business in a locality, you have to obey the law. If that law is sharing your data, you've gotta figure out a way to do that, or not operate. Figure out a privacy notice for your LA Riders and add…

But Uber is above the law. That's not a glib statement. They really are. They don't get taxi medallions. They don't follow employment law. Why would they follow this law?

They are a corporation. They can break laws with impunity. If it's in their self interest, they will. They've shown themselves to us. They don't care about the law. End of story.

Why have we lauded this company as a darling? Breaking laws isn't respectable. Call it fighting rent seekers if you want, pretty it up how you like, but they are lawless crooks.

What is respectable is helping people and moving society forward while playing by the same rules everyone else has to.

Do you enjoy playing monopoly with someone who reaches across the board, grabs your Marvin Gardens and says it's theirs? Why? Because they don't play by the rules? Would you keep playing with that person?

No. You wouldn't.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#86

Post by robomartin »

This is preposterous. Imagine government requiring any business to delivery real time data on customer behavior, from doctors to restaurants, Walmart to dispensaries.

The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution is about privacy FROM GOVERNMENT INTRUSION, which is precisely what this is, an intrusive act on the part of government.

Why don't they devote their time and effort to actually fixing the crumbling infrastructure here? It's a joke. There are third world countries that have better streets and highways than we have in certain parts of Los Angeles.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#87

Post by XCabbage »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #65
Spivak wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Uber is offering a service that by its very nature requires that you expose the service provider to information you may wish to keep private. How is this the service provider's fault? It's not like they're going out of their way to add tracking into something that doesn't require it. Like this is a little nuts, if you buy one of those GPS trackers for your kids you don't get to act shocked when you find out the c…

If a service "by its very nature" does shady things, maybe that service should not be offered in the first place? Critcizing users afterwards that they "can't act shocked" for having these things done to them is only playing a blame game.

This is a very daft take.

It's not even remotely shady for a service to inherently involve knowing where you are. That's something that is true of every brick and mortar store, and indeed every cab driver. Yet the government doesn't demand that those businesses provide real-time feeds of information about the movements of their customers, and if the government were to do so and they were to object on privacy grounds, we wouldn't take it to mean that their entire business model is inherently immoral and all shops should cease to exist.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#88

Post by testfoobar »

Of all the public-goods usurped for private profit companies recently, I find the scooters to be the most intrusive.

Scooters on sidewalks are dangerous and should be banned.

We have explicit laws against skateboarding and riding bicycles on sidewalks in most communities. For bicyclists in San Francisco: "It’s illegal to ride on the sidewalk if you are over the age of 13. (SF Transportation Code Sec. 7.2.12)" https://sfbike.org/resources/bicycle-law/rules-of-the-road/

Yet, everyday you can find scooters on sidewalks wherever scooters are available. Toddlers use sidewalks - they walk in a random walk. Hearing impaired, sight-impaired, mobility-impaired people use sidewalks. Seniors use sidewalks. These people do not expect 180lb adults riding at 5 to 10mph right in their face. The kinetic energy and momentum at 10mph of an adult is considerable.

Falls for anybody can lead to bone fractures. Even more so for seniors. Hip fractures in particular can be fatal for seniors. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-hip-fractures-elderly...

Scooters should not be allowed on sidewalks.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#89

Post by aeorgnoieang »

ysavir wrote: post #63
Spivak wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Uber is offering a service that by its very nature requires that you expose the service provider to information you may wish to keep private. How is this the service provider's fault? It's not like they're going out of their way to add tracking into something that doesn't require it. Like this is a little nuts, if you buy one of those GPS trackers for your kids you don't get to act shocked when you find out the c…

> But Uber is offering a service that by its very nature requires that you expose the service provider to information you may wish to keep private. Uber's ride hailing service, sure. But the same is not true for the scooter and bike services, which have no need for such information.

Huh? They have to know where the scooters and bikes are so they can be collected to be recharged.

Re: L.A. temporarily suspends Uber’s permit to rent out electric scooters and bikes

#90

Post by Someone1234 »

testfoobar wrote: post #88

Of all the public-goods usurped for private profit companies recently, I find the scooters to be the most intrusive. Scooters on sidewalks are dangerous and should be banned. We have explicit laws against skateboarding and riding bicycles on sidewalks in most communities. For bicyclists in San Francisco: "It’s illegal to ride on the sidewalk if you are over the age of 13. (SF Transportation Code Sec. 7.2.12)" https:/…

A similar argument could be made for banning running on sidewalks. In fact a runner could exceed the maximum electric speed of these scooters.

It is ultimately up to the rider to assure safe operating regardless of mode of transport (feed, skateboard, scooter, etc).

The fact that skateboards were widely banned due to a moral panic (largely around culture, not safety), isn't in itself a very strong argument since I'd point out that that ban lacks good justification within itself.

I might agree more if there were safe cycle paths that skateboarders, scooter users, and similar could use but there aren't. Their choices are the sidewalk, where there's a risk of minor injury or the street where there's a risk of death.

For now, the sidewalk is the "least bad" alternative until a better one is built.

Post reply on HN