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

latimes.com

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

#91

Post by alistairSH »

pmoriarty wrote: post #82
alistairSH wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The scooter could figure it out without an internet connection and sending location data back to the mothership. The OP asked why they had GPS at all - I was responding to that.

And I mostly agree. In an ideal world, Jump/Bird/etc wouldn't need a constant stream of data to locate their scooters. But, I don't see them getting away from at least having real-time data when a scooter is parked, for service/charging and theft prevention/recovery.

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

#92

Post by testfoobar »

Someone1234 wrote: post #90
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…

Runners and scooter riders are not the same thing at all.

Runners, and specifically regular runners, are by definition self-trained to hit both higher speeds and frequency of runs. The average adult just can't get up and run at 10mph for 10 minutes without training. The average adult probably couldn't do 6mph for 2 minutes. Yet this same average adult, without training, can get on a scooter and move at 5-10mph down a sidewalk.

Second, runners do not run everyday, multiple times for every trip and errand. You can grab a scooter for lunch, for an errand, etc multiple times a day.

Scooter trips are more frequent, done by everyday people and should be banned on sidewalks.

Lastly, it is not the job of pedestrians to accommodate scooters because there is no better alternative yet. That is not how laws and regulations work.

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

#93

Post by hombre_fatal »

alistairSH wrote: post #68
mschuster91 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, I'm inclined to have software enforcement and not hire more traffic cops. I can contest what a police officer is claiming in a court. With automated systems? Good luck. If society wants to enforce traffic laws, it should hire more cops, not hackable AI blackboxes.

The software doesn't issue you a ticket, so there's nothing to contest. It simple slows the scooter down in the restricted zone. And if the software is wrong, you stop using the system, and move to a vendor that makes it work. Anyway, not claiming this is ideal. Just sounds (without much thought) like a better solution than traffic cops.

Maybe if we're going to go down this route, we should have these systems in our cars, too.

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

#95

Post by papito »

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 think the case here is more complex, since Uber uses existing city infrastructure, and therefore may be compelled to contribute to the "public good".

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

#96

Post by mindslight »

michaelt wrote: post #3

I guess I don't see any way a dockless bike/scooter rental scheme can be compatible with privacy. Their need to know where available bikes are, and to be able to detect thefts makes it hard to imagine they could work without GPS tracking. And as soon as you know who rented what bike when, and where each bike went, you're going to start knowing customers' homes, workplaces and places of worship. Although the governmen…

One could certainly design a least authority system for bike rental. Trusted hardware to compute trip length, psuedonymous account system, untraceable payments. Identity or payment escrow in case of theft.

But really, the straightforward way is culturally. Like if there were a general expectation that a company would only use data for an immediate purpose and then delete it, employees confirmed the company culture and processes, their legal terms supported this, and there was a strong privacy law to backstop any bad actors.

But our culture is not there. We've just generally accepted that Uber will act as an attacker, exploiting their surveillance data on us as much as currently possible, storing it indefinitely to do "better" in the future, and turning it over to other third party attackers for "business purposes".

This article draws our attention because we're pretty sure if the city gets access to this data, they'll do the exact same things for their own ends - probably turning it over to the police to integrate with the ANPR data who will pass it to the feds for their own nefarious games.

It's an environment of zero trust with its corresponding high costs, which are becoming more and more apparent as wider society is hit with the implications. This is the true damage that the Surveillance Valley ethos has done, and it's going to take a hell of a long time to recover.

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

#97

Post by com2kid »

testfoobar wrote: post #92
Someone1234 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Runners and scooter riders are not the same thing at all. Runners, and specifically regular runners, are by definition self-trained to hit both higher speeds and frequency of runs. The average adult just can't get up and run at 10mph for 10 minutes without training. The average adult probably couldn't do 6mph for 2 minutes. Yet this same average adult, without training, can get on a scooter and move at 5-10mph down a…

> Scooter trips are more frequent, done by everyday people and should be banned on sidewalks.

Someone should do a cost benefit analysis of danger to pedestrians from the level of cars on the road due to air pollution compared to the reduced harm from cars but increase in risk from scooters.

Having cars drive by is non-0, exposure to break dust and car exhaust are known to case long term irreversible health effects, is there a crossover where a certain % of people getting hit by a scooter at 10mph is a net benefit if there is a large enough reduction in vehicle traffic?

Of course tire particles still exist from some scooters, but the tire types are different and I also wonder what the rate of tire dust from the tires scooters use, and what the exposure impact is there.

We tend to fear the immediate dangers we can see, but not bother doing the math on long term consequences.

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

#98

Post by supercanuck »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #67
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’ve never heard of a liquor board that required stores to deliver to the government a real time feed of who’s buying what liquor. If such a policy were created, and BevMo announced they refuse to comply, I’d be fully in support of that despite my normal concerns about companies ignoring regulations. It’s not about the general principle here. If Uber’s claim about deanonymization is accurate, this specific policy is…

Is Uber a Retail Store? Does the Store leave their merchandise all over the neighborhood with GPS micro controllers on them?

This analogy is absurd.

As municipalities get more technically advanced, why shouldn't they have access to the same type of data or where these scooters are? How hard is it to open up an API?

This seems to be, how dare citizens impose a cost of doing business in their neighborhoods!

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

#99

Post by Rebelgecko »

tyxodiwktis wrote: post #64

The core issue is that ridership data is a key piece the cities need to craft a tax on ride-sharing, and to tailor the tax to help their financially challenged public transit entities. Uber knows that if they give up scooter use data the city will immediately request it for ride sharing as well. The privacy question conveniently aligns with Uber’s position, but I doubt that this is Uber’s core concern vs avoiding eve…

I believe that Uber and Lyft already share data for car rides with the city of LA.

Edit: I've been trying to find a source and can't, so that may not be true. They only share detailed data with a few places, like NYC. LA only gets data on regular taxi rides, and it isn't realtime.

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

#100

Post by rolltiide »

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…

> The letter also questioned the validity of the “eleventh-hour administrative review process” that the city created last month.

It is apt to review the due process before complying.

If you're lucky you can get a judge to get the entire agency charter declared unconstitutional and your cost of business goes to zero.

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