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Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

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Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#201

Post by lkiernan »

giltleaf wrote: post #104
lkiernan wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black cabs are more accessible by default, but I'd assume if I called ahead for any taxi I'd need to let them know of any special needs, the same as if I needed to let them know I wanted a taxi for 7 people? Shouldn't there be an area for adding special requests such as accessibility? You filter to the vehicles that are able and willing to take this passenger's money. I can only assume that, as contracted drivers, th…

The special request feature wouldn't be hard to implement, but I'm not sure that it benefits drivers to respond to it unless there was also a system to incentivize them.

Such as being paid for accepting the business?

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#202

Post by Frondo »

Drakim wrote: post #117
Frondo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why change now?" Because what they're doing is wrong, and doing something wrong because you can get a lot of money for it is pretty awful.

That is how business and capitalism works. Being immoral can hurt your profits, because customers might be repulsed and boycott you. Breaking the law can hurt your profits, because the government might take action against your business. Those are the sole reasons why you would avoid doing immoral and illegal things. If the benefit outweighs the negatives, then businesses will do those things. If they don't do it, the…

Of course people can be moral actors in the business world.

"Because you might get caught" is by no means the only reason to do the right thing, even if it means leaving money on the table.

What you're describing is a sociopathic greed.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#203

Post by sillygoose »

dang wrote: post #200
sillygoose wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a sidenote, whoever downvoted this and the other related post is allergic to thinking.

Please don't post comments like this, which break the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, the real problem here is inane downvotes, not that I pointed it out.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#204

Post by aries1980 »

true_religion wrote: post #190
sillygoose wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that taxi regulation doesn't make any sense to begin with. As you said, people get transported from Place A to B for a fee. Fundamentally, it's as simple as buying a pound of cheese from a supermarket. It's just a transaction between people. So why should taxi drivers have to get "licensed"? What exactly is that license? What does it represent besides going through a burdensome ordeal? How would gettin…

> So why should taxi drivers have to get "licensed"? What exactly is that license? What does it represent besides going through a burdensome ordeal? How would getting licensed increase safety in any way? It's not like anyone wants to experience a car crash. All businesses must be licenced. Taxi licensing is special because of their special circumstance. They conduct their business primarily on public streets, and wit…

In the UK the Black Cab drivers have special rights. E.g. they are allowed to stop on cycle lanes, hairpin corners, etc. They are allowed to use engines which has 3x more emissions than a VW Golf 1.6TDI.

So they are licenced to serve the selfish customers who don't care whether they endanger others with hailing a taxi at a place they should not and they don't care others who have to inhale the fumes.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#205

Post by DanBC »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #162
true_religion wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its fair to say... Follow all these regulations and we'll let you do business on the public streets. or Do business in private, via the phone or internet, and you don't have to follow these regulations. --- Don't force the choice by saying regulations apply to everyone, even people who aren't going to get any benefit out of it. Uber doesn't have to use wheel-chair accessible vehicles, but they also can't resp…

Or: You may do transportation business on our roads if you follow our regulations, with no regard to how the ride was arranged. Non-disabled rider's fares subsidizing accessibility for the disabled is no different than how health insurance works. Why would we allow Uber to freeload? Because they're "innovative"? Or "disruptive"? No. Follow the rules Uber or GTFO out of the market.

In London there are two sets of regulation: the regs for black cabs and the regs for mini cabs.

Uber doesn't want to comply with either set of regs.

There are some considerable problems in UK minicabs avoiding their duties under disability discrimination laws -- not turning up; refusing to carry; refusing dogs (and not because the driver has an alergy; over charging and stealing from some users (eg blind people or those with a learning disability). So Uber is not unusual there.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#206

Post by murbard2 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #180
murbard2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens... The way I see it is that there is no such thing as "commercial activity". There is voluntary activity of all sorts, and all kind of transactions happen, whether it be through payments, barter or goodwill. If I'm exempt from the ADA when inviting friends over, so should you be when you rent your room on AirBnB, and so should the motel across the street. All exist on…

How can there be no such attribute if there is a continuum of that attribute? Picking thresholds is not unfair. It's the fundamental way that life interacts with the world around it. You physically cannot examine everything that could affect you with infinite precision. The job of regulation is not to pick a mythical "perfect" result for every possible case, it's to force a good guideline into place. This is partiall…

What I mean to say is that the attribute isn't categorical, even though it is treated as such in the discussion. I'm also not saying the regulation cannot "work" by picking a threshold, I am appealing to our moral intuition that regulating private behavior is wrong to explain why regulating "commercial" behavior is also wrong.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#207

Post by Dylan16807 »

murbard2 wrote: post #206
Dylan16807 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can there be no such attribute if there is a continuum of that attribute? Picking thresholds is not unfair. It's the fundamental way that life interacts with the world around it. You physically cannot examine everything that could affect you with infinite precision. The job of regulation is not to pick a mythical "perfect" result for every possible case, it's to force a good guideline into place. This is partiall…

What I mean to say is that the attribute isn't categorical, even though it is treated as such in the discussion. I'm also not saying the regulation cannot "work" by picking a threshold, I am appealing to our moral intuition that regulating private behavior is wrong to explain why regulating "commercial" behavior is also wrong.

But how does it explain that? The situations are clearly very different on either end of the spectrum, so you can't directly use the intuition from one end on the other. The only thing you've really shown is that the categorization will be mildly imperfect.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#208

Post by murbard2 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #207
murbard2 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean to say is that the attribute isn't categorical, even though it is treated as such in the discussion. I'm also not saying the regulation cannot "work" by picking a threshold, I am appealing to our moral intuition that regulating private behavior is wrong to explain why regulating "commercial" behavior is also wrong.

But how does it explain that? The situations are clearly very different on either end of the spectrum, so you can't directly use the intuition from one end on the other. The only thing you've really shown is that the categorization will be mildly imperfect.

Our moral intuitions tend to rely on categorical differences.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#209

Post by maxlybbert »

lkiernan wrote: post #201
giltleaf wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The special request feature wouldn't be hard to implement, but I'm not sure that it benefits drivers to respond to it unless there was also a system to incentivize them.

Such as being paid for accepting the business?

I'm sure I'm not the only person seeing ads from Uber to use my own car for extra income. For the record, I haven't signed up.

My own car is not wheelchair accessible. It is spacious, and could fit a collapsed wheelchair. But I don't have a lift. Even if I were to sign up as an Uber driver, I can't say that I'm a kind enough soul to add a wheelchair lift or other equipment to make my car wheelchair accessible.

I might be willing to do so for the right incentive. If Uber were to get me a discount on the modification, or promise to buy my car from me when I no longer want it, or give me a higher percentage of the fare when I pick somebody up, etc. But I, personally, wouldn't foot the bill for purely altruistic reasons.

Re: Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to Us

#210

Post by Dylan16807 »

murbard2 wrote: post #208
Dylan16807 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how does it explain that? The situations are clearly very different on either end of the spectrum, so you can't directly use the intuition from one end on the other. The only thing you've really shown is that the categorization will be mildly imperfect.

Our moral intuitions tend to rely on categorical differences.

There's rarely such a thing as a perfect category in real life. Arbitrary categories are still categories, and still work with moral intuition, they just take slightly more care around corner cases.

Extrapolating from one case is a bad idea when categories are fuzzy. You find such things as the sorites paradox.

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