It's interesting how taxi brokers are also like other fads and people will align to them according to their own values. Since before Uber there are many taxi companies with their own Uber-like service and taxi brokers similar to Uber. I know of people who switched company or broker based on statements the owner of the one company made on radio about cyclists. When Uber is new in town it is a 'cool' thing to do, but once they are not so new people find reasons to change. This makes for an interesting and dynamic market. I think companies like Uber hope to dominate the market and keep doing better at it through economies of scale, but passenger personal emotive preferences will probably always leave room for alternatives.
Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
91–100 of 139 posts
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#92If you live in San Francisco, you might consider getting a bike and/or using public transportation instead of ride-sharing services. Either of them are better for the city by reducing congestion and pollution, and biking in particular is surprisingly fast and convenient. If you are interested in getting introduced to biking, there are a bunch of free classes by the SF Bicycle Coalition that I highly recommend you loo…
So I cycle around SF, but am considering stopping. The data varies depending on which source you use, but it seems like cycling is about 3 times less dangerous than motorbiking, and considerably (at least ~5-10x) more dangerous than driving. Most people who've lived in SF have plenty of anecdotal evidence of friends who've been hurt, often seriously, by bike accidents. I'd love to be proven wrong about this: I love c…
I live in Seattle, and gave up biking on the streets years ago. Just too dangerous.
I remember a public service commercial on TV in the 60's which would exhort people to drive defensively, even when they were in the right. The tag line was "don't be dead right".
I see more and more cyclists on the road, and too many ride like they're invulnerable if they're in the right. They'll do things like stop in the middle of the road around a blind corner. They'll ride on the stripe that separates the bike lane from the road. They'll force overtaking drivers to move into oncoming traffic to get around them.
I've talked to local bike activists, and their attitude is if they're in the right, it's the car driver's problem. I just don't get it. What good is being in the right if you're dead?
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I cycle around SF, but am considering stopping. The data varies depending on which source you use, but it seems like cycling is about 3 times less dangerous than motorbiking, and considerably (at least ~5-10x) more dangerous than driving. Most people who've lived in SF have plenty of anecdotal evidence of friends who've been hurt, often seriously, by bike accidents. I'd love to be proven wrong about this: I love c…
I've ridden my bike to and from work in SF nearly every day for the past 4 years and have only once come close to being in an accident with a car. But every day I see plenty of other cyclists making overly-aggressive moves that put themselves and other people in danger. You may claim that I'm blaming the victim, but from what I've observed many cyclists kind of enjoy a little (in their opinion) justified indignation…
Ugh, this is so true. As a (grad) student who bikes to campus, I hate dealing with drivers who have been conditioned by the inconsiderate other cyclists. I personally always yield to cars in right turn lanes and that sort of thing, but sometimes they also slow down because they're used to asshole cyclists cutting in front of them, so it just causes confusion and tension from both sides. Well, tension mostly on my side, because a mistake is much more costly to me than to the driver :(. I don't get why other people don't bike more defensively, it's terrifying to me.
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#94Why do we dislike Uber? Lets go through the links. 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. 2) CEO wants to automate business processes. Those of us in tech would never consider replacing humans with machines, right? 3) Trying to compete for workers. (Didn't we hate Apple/Google for agreeing not to do this?) 4) We love Peter Thiel and he hates it. 5-7) A few Uber drivers are crazy (Uber is helping the cops). Note that…
10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong about this, You're also hilariously ignorant about the most basic aspects of journalistic ethics. The million dollar "opposition research" effort that BuzzFeedBen reported on is NOT journalism. Do journalists dig up dirt? Yes.…
Your points are totally valid, and I agree with you insomuch that I think the comment you replied to is a poorly-informed work of reductionism, but you're being very abrasive yourself as well.
You practically gave your parent commenter a verbal beat-down over his grasp of journalistic ethics. The guy said a bunch of mostly wrong things, but he made a few good points, too!
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#95Why do we dislike Uber? Lets go through the links. 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. 2) CEO wants to automate business processes. Those of us in tech would never consider replacing humans with machines, right? 3) Trying to compete for workers. (Didn't we hate Apple/Google for agreeing not to do this?) 4) We love Peter Thiel and he hates it. 5-7) A few Uber drivers are crazy (Uber is helping the cops). Note that…
10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong about this, You're also hilariously ignorant about the most basic aspects of journalistic ethics. The million dollar "opposition research" effort that BuzzFeedBen reported on is NOT journalism. Do journalists dig up dirt? Yes.…
Yeesh I agree with your comment overall but what's the point of making it 50% ad hominem?
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#96Why do we dislike Uber? Lets go through the links. 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. 2) CEO wants to automate business processes. Those of us in tech would never consider replacing humans with machines, right? 3) Trying to compete for workers. (Didn't we hate Apple/Google for agreeing not to do this?) 4) We love Peter Thiel and he hates it. 5-7) A few Uber drivers are crazy (Uber is helping the cops). Note that…
10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong about this, You're also hilariously ignorant about the most basic aspects of journalistic ethics. The million dollar "opposition research" effort that BuzzFeedBen reported on is NOT journalism. Do journalists dig up dirt? Yes.…
Ok, lets roll with your idea that anonymously publishing true information is unethical.
If a woman blogged unkind and sexist behavior at a tech company, but hid her name to avoid the backlash (like Michael), that would be unethical. I guess she'd be an "asshat", right? Same thing for a journalist using an anonymous source?
Bad journalistic ethics? https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/that-time-i-was-caught-c...
I do indeed have a poor understanding of ethics and I'm pretty open about it. It's hardly an easy subject. Often I think I've found the "critical element" and suddenly swapping around the personalities radically changes my intuition.
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
City biking does have a bit of a learning curve, and I do highly recommend you look into those classes that I linked to above (or find similar ones in your area). You will get better with experience though, and the better you get the more you'll be able to understand how to bike defensively and reduce any sort of close calls.
I wish more people would take your advice and learn how to ride defensively. I really feel like most people who get in accidents on their bicycles probably aren't paying attention to what's going on around them.
This sounds like victim shaming. Possibly the drivers of the cars are not paying attention, maybe both, but to assume that people are somehow doing something wrong (many may be) just because they are in an accident seems overly presumptuous.
You can advocate for learning more about defensive riding without making it seem like those who are in accidents are just ignorant or unaware.
My first two car accidents were completely unavoidable and unrelated to my awareness. I would have hated to have someone tell me these accidents could have been avoided with further training, knowing nothing else about the accident except that I had one.
edit: I see your other comment in this thread, it has more information, thanks for that, all the same, it definitely seems to ignore a lot of complex factors and use anecdotal evidence (4 years of that, though, is pretty reasonable).
My main gripe with any car/bike interactions are that they are orders of magnitude different. A car slams on its brakes to respond to something in the road, or swerves, and they can do that an order of magnitude faster and more powerful than a person on a bike can. As long as bikers share the road with cars, there will be an imbalance of power which is unavoidable, so they should feel a bit of indignation.
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I cycle around SF, but am considering stopping. The data varies depending on which source you use, but it seems like cycling is about 3 times less dangerous than motorbiking, and considerably (at least ~5-10x) more dangerous than driving. Most people who've lived in SF have plenty of anecdotal evidence of friends who've been hurt, often seriously, by bike accidents. I'd love to be proven wrong about this: I love c…
I've ridden my bike to and from work in SF nearly every day for the past 4 years and have only once come close to being in an accident with a car. But every day I see plenty of other cyclists making overly-aggressive moves that put themselves and other people in danger. You may claim that I'm blaming the victim, but from what I've observed many cyclists kind of enjoy a little (in their opinion) justified indignation…
The fact that bikes want to be treated as "cars" on the road (as in they want space and respect), but when their light is red all of a sudden they become tiny little passengers that can illegally cross the red light. I'm not talking about the ones that stop and look. I mean the ones that just fly straight through the light because they believe they have a few seconds before the cross traffic comes, which is true about 99% of the time. Then you get the 1% of the time a car decides to jump the light and goes early.
Bikes are also extremely rude to pedestrians. I have never heard drivers yelling at pedestrians when they are crossing a cross-walk. I have however, been exiting a bus after there was an accident ahead and have had a bike barely stop in front of all the exiting passengers and scream, "HEY IM TRYING TO GET TO WORK HERE" as though everybody needs to get out of the way because he is very important. Also seen bikes try to go through when the pedestrians are trying to cross the street. Luckily it is nothing like that idiot that rammed his bike through the pedestrian crosswalk and killed a man just so he wouldn't have to slow down.
Maybe the cyclists (in general) should stop being so aggressive, arrogant, and consider the actual people that have no protection from cyclists. Maybe then there won't be so many bike accidents.
PS. It's a _BAD_ idea to cross your bike in front of a MUNI bus just so you can make it over to the intersection you somehow overbiked. Let the MUNI bus win.
PPS. FFS wear a goddamn helmet.
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I cycle around SF, but am considering stopping. The data varies depending on which source you use, but it seems like cycling is about 3 times less dangerous than motorbiking, and considerably (at least ~5-10x) more dangerous than driving. Most people who've lived in SF have plenty of anecdotal evidence of friends who've been hurt, often seriously, by bike accidents. I'd love to be proven wrong about this: I love c…
I've ridden my bike to and from work in SF nearly every day for the past 4 years and have only once come close to being in an accident with a car. But every day I see plenty of other cyclists making overly-aggressive moves that put themselves and other people in danger. You may claim that I'm blaming the victim, but from what I've observed many cyclists kind of enjoy a little (in their opinion) justified indignation…
As a cyclist, driver, and pedestrian in SF this really is a tough city to be in. Drivers frequently stop in bike lanes, run red lights and roll through stop signs. I've also had many near misses in bike to bike collisions from other cyclists who don't think they need to stop ever. When I used to Caltrain, I've seen cars turn right without warning forcing me to a stop as often as I've seen cyclists try to overtake a signaling vehicle. When I jog on the embarcadero, road bikes whiz past in either direction despite the bike lanes right off the sidewalk.
SF seems to be perpetually in a rush...you need to get around defensively and safely no matter how you are getting around,
Re: Trends: Uber vs. Lyft
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
City biking does have a bit of a learning curve, and I do highly recommend you look into those classes that I linked to above (or find similar ones in your area). You will get better with experience though, and the better you get the more you'll be able to understand how to bike defensively and reduce any sort of close calls.
I wish more people would take your advice and learn how to ride defensively. I really feel like most people who get in accidents on their bicycles probably aren't paying attention to what's going on around them.
You're right! I come from a very bike-dense country (The Netherlands, we have more bicycles than inhabitants.) My son is 4 and he rides his bike to school. I'll cycle next to him, but he does know all the rules and basics about defensive riding.
I bicycled in and around NYC last year and it was crazy. Car drivers didn't really pay attention to bikers, but that was actually much less dangerous than I anticipated. The cyclists however were flipping mad! No rules, no courtesy, aggresive riding, running red lights, cutting off cars... Madness! Not all,of them, of course, but considerably more than you would see in, say, Amsterdam.
The bike lanes is NYC were fantastic, though. NYC seems perfect for bike transportation, I never got why you don't see more cyclists. SFO with all those hills (like I said, I'm dutch, no hills here...) and cable cars seems more challenging!