Uber ordered to stop self-driving vehicle service in San Francisco

YES. I live 10 feet away from the garage. I've noticed over the past few months that they've been ramping in typical startup fashion: hockey stick growth.

After reading about Lyft's CEO, a narrative of "nice guys finishing last", I started realizing how unscrupulous Uber is. Sadly, cut-throat businesses win.

I recently took an Uber ride, where the driver was an un-retired man in his 70s. He recently just abandoned his failing dry clean business. This one hits close to home for me, because my parents are approaching their 70s, holding on to a failing dry clean business, too. For me, hardworking people like this, with arguably bad business acumen, are counter example to the notion of "if you're poor, it's because you didn't work hard enough." Before the dry clean business, the Uber driver ran a deli business, but that was a failure, too. No doubt he possesses an entrepreneurial spirit, albeit he probably shouldn't. I can't fault him for not being smarter. He proceeded to tell me about his idea to create a website where people upload images of their face, at different angle, and can get a custom printed 3d figurine, that he would hand paint them. I didn't have the heart to tell him that as someone in the top 1% income bracket of 20-something year olds, who consistently blows money on expensive toys / gadgets / dinners, I would never spend $300 bucks on a custom painted figurine. See, he was an artist before coming to America. He said "I want to be an artist before I die. I was too busy making a living when I came to America".

Uber gave this man a job. That's good. But he's being paid near minimum wage. To achieve that, he has to work 12+ hour days to acquire the bonuses that Uber uses to incentivize their drivers to become addicted. These are the kinds of risk Uber induces on its drivers, customers, and other people on the road. The sad reality is, he's going to be displaced from this minimum wage job by automation, much earlier than people expect. Uber doesn't care. I'm not saying Uber or any private company MUST care. I'm just illustrating how a company's values permeates itself, and precipitates to individuals' livelihoods.

I recently read an article about the unit economics of Uber. It doesn't work out. Uber, in it's current form is based on leveraging free VC money to subsidize and incentivize somewhat artificial demand. It's predatory monopolistic tactics. They won't be able to live up to their unicorn IPO valuation hype. They NEED to expand into other domains. Recently, Uber acquired an A.I. startup, which I think is an indicator of this. Alternatively, they can fix the unit economics equation to be profitable. Autonomous vehicles is the purported answer. This VC and unicorn valuation environment, I believe, is resulting in this kind of hastiness, at the increased risk of human lives.

If you are in California, you will occasionally be required to go to an office in-person for DL renewals where your vision will be tested as part of the process. Many insurance companies also incentivize older drivers taking "mature driver improvement" courses every few years as a refresher. Then of course there's things like traffic school if you are driving and receive a moving traffic violation. This seems straightforward...

Also, I might note this because I went through this process with my father... when your vision is bad enough to fail the DMV's criteria of 20/40 corrected vision with either or both eyes, they have a whole load of things they make you do. With my father he could theoretically hit the 20/40 vision requirement but made mistakes due to scarring from surgeries that blurred vision in only certain areas. He had to get documentation from his doctor as to what kind of driving he could potentially do (e.g. no night driving), got additional mirrors installed in the car, went through a special drive test (after he did his own refresher driving class voluntarily), and had a whole load of restrictions added to his already limited term license (e.g. he had to get a new license after only a couple of years, and every renewal would require a drive test). In the end, it was such a hassle despite zero functional issues driving that he ended up giving up his DL at the last renewal. If his vision had declined significantly from there, DMV would have immediately revoked the license and suspended his ability to receive a new one.

So, sure, seniors and teens alike cause a lot of accidents, but we're not exactly lacking on trying to reduce problems.

[1]: https://waymo.com/journey/