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London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#61

Post by foldr »

divegeek wrote: post #30
[deleted] wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

True, and GPS navigation can have real-time traffic information while a cabbie can at best make an educated guess. What's _really_ valuable, though, isn't real-time traffic information, but future traffic information. What matters isn't the traffic right now, but the traffic as it will be when you arrive at a given portion of the journey. I suspect that at present cabbies have the edge there, but that edge will also…

My point was that a cabbie doesn't have to guess if the GPS can provide the info. There's no rule saying that black cab drivers aren't allowed to use technology when it's useful.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#62

Post by notduncansmith »

jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

How'd you get an Uber driver that's never heard of Valencia St?

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#63

Post by sushid »

chrisseaton wrote: post #55
jdmichal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In relation to your comment about the review: If anything less than 5 stars is unsatisfactory in Uber's eyes, why do they even have stars? If the rating is boolean anyway (5-stars or not-5-stars), then just put a single choice: Was this ride satisfactory? It shouldn't be my responsibility to know that rating a driver who was slightly late or slightly lost 4 stars is a Bad Thing. However, if you ask me whether that sa…

Hmmm... are you supposed to rate 5-stars for acceptable service? I've been rating 3 by default - then plus or minus depending on extraordinary things.

Yes, very much so. Have you seen the drivers' ratings? They usually hover around 4.8-5.0. If you're rated below 4.7 for both Lyft and Uber, I believe you're either on 'probation' or removed from their service.

You accidentally rating someone 3 for an average service can actually cost them their job. I'm hoping their algorithm uses some sort of a weighted average to offset the ratings of individuals such as yourself who consistently rate very low.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#64

Post by Retric »

mattmanser wrote: post #57
custardcream wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a terribly hard job actually. I worked for a startup in 2004 that was doing this with haulage companies. We had 8000 data points moving around the UK coming in via GPRS and 3rd parties, traffic information aggregated and routing and mapping data, pick up corridors and event data. It was (bar the web front end) a relatively modest sub-30kloc chunk of C++. Now the scale is different but in 10 years, the proble…

30kloc is not a trivial problem, that's a year's worth of programming. I also love this: the problem isn't necessarily much more complicated, just larger If a programmer ever said this to me, it'd be a massive red flag that the estimate they're about to give me is going to be very wrong.

It's a larger data-set not a more complex problem.

Also, there is no need to get a perfect solution anything better than what's out there is useful.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#65

Post by Gustomaximus »

custardcream wrote: post #9
jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

Well I drive around London a lot during the day time (inside CC zone) and Google Maps is pretty damn good on Android. I did a few years in taxis but owning a car that is CC exempt is cheaper including parking in NCP holes. Part of the reason its cheaper is after some experience driving around the city, you realise that at least half the taxi drivers are taking the piss. "the knowledge" is imminently replaceable by te…

> you realise that at least half the taxi drivers are taking the piss

This is really not the case with my London cab experience. These guys are super professional. In many other cities I've found cabs taking the scenic route but never with black cabs. I feel your 'half' claim extremely inflated off probably what was very few bad experiences.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#66

Post by blahedo »

bmsleight wrote: post #4

Check out the run calling halfway down the article (Matt McCabe “calls-over” a long run)

Yes, and notice how much of the run involves "forward" calls---that's when you stay on the same road, but it changes name. It's mindblowing.

If you want to track the run (it's accurate!) the starting point is right next to this node in OSM: http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/279219489

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#67

Post by jdmichal »

choult wrote: post #53
jdmichal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In relation to your comment about the review: If anything less than 5 stars is unsatisfactory in Uber's eyes, why do they even have stars? If the rating is boolean anyway (5-stars or not-5-stars), then just put a single choice: Was this ride satisfactory? It shouldn't be my responsibility to know that rating a driver who was slightly late or slightly lost 4 stars is a Bad Thing. However, if you ask me whether that sa…

One argument for the resolution is a perception as to whether the ride is improving or not - a binary indication of this will only tell you that you've gotten to the best ride, whereas a scale will, over the course of time, show improvement or detriment (subject to the different standards of the rider). Also, one person's "satisfactory" might not be another's, so having a range to select from will provide a much rich…

A worthy argument, but one that falls a bit flat when the acceptable range of "passing" scores is .3 (4.7+) out of 5.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#68

Post by objclxt »

notduncansmith wrote: post #62
jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

How'd you get an Uber driver that's never heard of Valencia St?

Happens all the time, especially when there are big events on. I had a driver a few weeks ago who had come down from Sacramento to work the weekend in SF for such an event (Dreamforce, I think) and was relying solely on GPS.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#69

Post by bsg75 »

jdmichal wrote: post #46
jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

In relation to your comment about the review: If anything less than 5 stars is unsatisfactory in Uber's eyes, why do they even have stars? If the rating is boolean anyway (5-stars or not-5-stars), then just put a single choice: Was this ride satisfactory? It shouldn't be my responsibility to know that rating a driver who was slightly late or slightly lost 4 stars is a Bad Thing. However, if you ask me whether that sa…

Its not just Uber, I often get "reminded" of an upcoming quality survey where anything less than perfect is equivalent to a tragedy.

I believe this is yet another case of managers using data without actually taking the time to understand the domain, or use it to identify problems and develop solutions. The approach seems to be nothing more than a facade of customer service.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#70

Post by jostmey »

jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

I always enter in my final destination when requesting a pickup. Avoids any confusion. Seriously?!
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