171–180 of 196 posts
Been in those kind of jobs myself and the only way out is to upskill until your value as a worker is high enough that ruthless managers that couldn't care less about the impact of their decisions on individuals won't get away with it.
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~3-5 years is way too soon. The technology might be ready but the governments (think regulations, traffic laws, car insurance companies, car manufacturers, etc etc etc ) in addition to the public (which is not ready either). Is going to take at least 10+ years for it to resemble something like you imagine it.
The technology is not nearly ready. Not in a city. It's like flying drone delivery. Easy to demonstrate in a single controlled setting, but nearly impossible to actually implement in the real world.
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How would you say self-driving vehicles fit into this? Supposedly they're rolling out in ~3-5 years, and with self-driving vehicles, you no longer need the middle man managing a fleet of contractors. EDIT: I'm willing to me a Long Bet [1] with anyone regarding fully autonomous self driving vehicles in regular use in 6 years. [1] http://longbets.org/ ; http://longbets.org/rules/
Self-driving cars in a city environment are like flying cars. Sounds kinda plausible, but the tech is always going to be 20 years away.
It took one year before the race was finished.
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It's hard for me to even imagine how a self-driving car could manage somewhere like large swaths of Manhattan where a certain amount of, umm, aggression is needed to make any forward progress. Though it will likely happen some day (probably multiple decades from now). As it is, I'd even settle for voice control on my phone that could reliably understand me.
> a certain amount of, umm, aggression is needed to make any forward progress They added a slight "aggression" back in 2011, if other cars aren't letting it out it starts pushing forwards a bit: > Sometimes, however, the car has to be more "aggressive." When going through a four-way intersection, for example, it yields to other vehicles based on road rules; but if other cars don't reciprocate, it advances a bit to sh…
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Companies like Uber and Lyft operating without as stringent regulation as regular taxi companies is their main competitive advantage (AirBnB is in the same group). Taxi drivers have lobbied for years to build up the kind of economic protections they have from disappearing margins in a competitive marketplace, and consequently being a taxi driver meant you could make a middle class living without tortuous hours. Uber…
I would argue that it has been a long time in the USA since a taxi driver could earn a middle class income driving. Medallion fees basically make them indentured servants.
The main difficulty in getting a network like this to succeed is the fact that there is no incentive for new drivers to join.
Until then, they are just a taxi company with lax employment protocol.
It's great to see how easy it is for drivers to switch networks if they are unhappy, but drivers have to understand that prices are going down and they'll likely earn less money over time on all networks. When articles are posted about Uber drivers earning $90k/yr, I'm sure many folks quit their $40k office job and hit the road. The thing is, driving taxi is pretty low skilled so the growing supply of drivers will re…
Even if $90K a year is sustainable, driving a taxi is a very high-expense business. You'll drive your car into the ground far quicker than you did before, insurance is going to be insanely expensive (an UberX driver I talked to once told me his insurance is $7K a year), and gasoline isn't free (and getting less and less free every day). The take-home from $90K driving taxis is very different than the take-home from $…
My ugly questions on this are: What about liability for when an Uber or Lyft driver kills someone in an accident driving unsafely? Or just murders someone because they're having a bad day? Or get carjacked? I mean, I guess it's just one spree away from people doing dangerous things?
The only reason to phrase your question the way you did is to increase the FUD surrounding car services like Uber and Lyft. The same question could be asked of any person in any profession. Regardless, the answer to your question is the first result when you search Google for "Uber liability coverage": > Uber holds a commercial insurance policy with $1 million of coverage per incident. Drivers’ liability to third par…
If a cab driver in New York City rapes and kills a passenger, it wouldn't make people distrust all cabs in NYC, much less cabs in other cities; there's no brand name to be damaged by news coverage, and as a news story it probably wouldn't even be covered by media outside of the NYC area.
But if an Uber driver rapes and kills a passenger, it will be covered by media everywhere, because Uber is a newsworthy company and because Uber has a global presence, and the Uber brand will be damaged worldwide, not just locally. Because Uber is a "new thing" there will be lots of people/media asking questions about the safety of Uber (in many cases stupid questions, but still).
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Self-driving vehicles are the final commoditization of the rides-for-hire business. Personally, I'd be very skeptical about the 3-5 year time frame, but clearly they're coming at some point. When they do, I can't see any rides-for-hire business having gross margins higher than 5% (though the size of the rides-for-hire market may well expand greatly). Barrier for entry is basically nonexistent.
Scale and perks will drive that 5% up, I imagine. Sure, Joe Average can buy a Tesla Model A (for automatic, obviously) and have it operate as a AI-Uber Driver, but Uber can buy a fleet of thousands, allowing them better pricing, better access to charging stations, better data about which rides are most valuable and where to position their cars. With a bit better margins comes things like bottled water in the cars. Th…