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Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

bbc.com

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Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#491

Post by bbulkow »

connicpu wrote: post #433
peristeronic wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human driver would also follow the same heuristic. That is why it was programmed that way. People don't assume people are going to randomly walk in front of their cars except at cross walks.

Idk about you, but if I see a human start to step into the road I slow down/stop depending on how close they are. Someone stopped and facing the road looking both ways obviously may be attempting to cross, even if "illegally"

I'm enough of a jerk that sometimes, if they are at the edge of the road, I will stop and honk. Even if they are engrossed in their phone. Because, in my jurisdiction, it is illegal to not give the pedestrian the right of way at a crosswalk. Pedestrians who aren't planning on entering the roadway shouldn't stand at a crosswalk and not enter.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#492

Post by dang »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #128
yaa_minu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you're being downvoted shows how much of a socialist hell-hole HN has become. No one is forcing people to drive for uber and no one is forcing the rider to use uber. In my city, Accra, Taxis were so expensive until uber came to the market and forced down the price. The only system that puts the consumer (read: common man) first is the free market (if and only if politicians would allow it to work).

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological battle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#493

Post by ma2rten »

criddell wrote: post #326
ma2rten wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that their margin is much higher than that after factoring in discounts.

I may be wrong, but I don't think the driver keeps 95% of the fare.

Keep in mind that Uber's revenue was $3.6 billion in the last quarter, but they lost $1.2 billion. I wouldn't be surprised if their margin was negative.

Really the problem is not that Uber gets paid too much, but that drivers are underpaid. I think a minimum wage for drivers is a better solution. In California such a law is currently underway.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#494

Post by Jommi »

andy_ppp wrote: post #452
Jommi wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes if a company does something that is not in the core specialisations, they would be expensive. Who guessed?

I'm talking about the gig economy ripping off their workers. I think you've misunderstood and been rude and sarcastic with it.

Did not mean to be rude at all. It just seems you're misunderstanding how differently Uber operates in each market.

There are multiple markets where Uber is not ripping their drivers off in any way, because if they did they would be running to competitors. The problem with gig economy workers nearly always stems from the core issue of lack of legislation in self-employment.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#495

Post by atoav »

bbulkow wrote: post #488
atoav wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I’d feel pretty shitty about leaving a bad review for a driver. It would feel like leaving a bad review for your DHL guy: unless they are downright wreckless, I see them as poor souls in bad jobs, that try to squeeze them out. It is human to not do a shit job perfectly all the time and I won’t make their day any shitier, just because they hurt my sensitive soul by not treating me like a member of the roy…

I give non-fives for cheating ( extending pickup or dropoff ), serious safety issues ( falling asleep and drifting out of lane ), and impersonating ( a different person than registered to drive ). The platform should be able to detect the first cheating problem, the other two are much harder and should have customer input.

I think I can agree with that

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#496

Post by harel »

cactus2093 wrote: post #487
harel wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, as someone who strives for balance, I can't sit idle when you say "All tech is evil". That is just not true. We are all tech. all of us here. Very few people on this planet are "evil". However, many actions are perceived as evil by some and good by others. Google is not evil - they might do some things wrong, or badly but I don't believe they are inherently "evil". Neither is Uber or Facebook or any other tech…

I'm not claiming all tech is evil, just pointing out that I see this more and more as just being the accepted viewpoint these days. I also find it a pretty absurd claim, that's what I'm saying.

fair enough. apology for misreading your comment

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#497

Post by 72deluxe »

BurningFrog wrote: post #392
72deluxe wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, and I can see that you've been downvoted but how do you actually propose solving this "unnavigable" problem? By bulldozing existing property that is owned by multitudes of private landowners and building new roads or something else?? Honestly, what's your solution?

I don't have a solution. I don't even live in London. I do think that if the city tried to make navigation more user friendly, a few simple ideas could improve things. I suspect no such effort has ever been made. I know this is very hard even in companies that live or die by their their products being user friendly, so for a city that don't have those incentives, it probably will never happen. Not sure how bulldozing…

I know they have tried signs to help drivers but having driven there, sometimes you have about 6 signs on one post and 6 on another pointing the opposite direction, and at 40mph (which nobody around you does - they're all in a rush or seem to be living in a high-speed time warp with a distortion of how long a second is...) it is nigh-on impossible to read all of the signs and make a sensible decision without changing lanes at the last minute to the anger of your fellow drivers and peril of your own life and safety.

If they introduced one-way systems to reduce the number of signs in a given area, it'd still lead to having to have "knowledge" to know about the one-way system and how to get on/off it at the appopriate place so that wouldn't be an improvement.

If they reduced signs, it'd require knowledge of the area.

If they added more signs to help make it more navigable, it'd be impossible to read at speed (like it currently is).

There is honestly no solution. At some point you will have to actually learn something of the locality. We wouldn't apply the same logic to writing software - "people shouldn't have to learn a programming language! It's not fair!" - no we have to have knowledge of the machine we are writing for and an understanding of the language we are using.

And I say this having driven there before GPS and driving into the (new at the time) congestion zone accidentally and getting a fine.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#498

Post by isostatic »

Cougher wrote: post #102
isostatic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private hire drivers are vetted, and their cars have to undergo enhanced MOTs

Color me convinced by your exhaustive comparison.

What difference in vetting is there between Black Cab drivers and Minicab drivers in London?

What difference in vehicle maintenence?

The vetting process may be flawed, but it's flawed in both hackney carriage and phv licensing. This was acknowleged by say Milton Keynes, which gave a Hackney + PHV license to an applicant with convictions for rape and other serious sexual offences [0]

I have no confidence in London that the vetting process works, and the authorities are far more interested in retaining an obsolete cartel. Rather than fix their vetting procedure (which has always allowed dodgy minicab firms, which were never a threat to the powerful black cab industry), they concentrate on Uber.

[0] https://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/pressreleases/2014/aug/taxi...

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#499

Post by 72deluxe »

wutbrodo wrote: post #396
72deluxe wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend who is from Woking said that southerners typically viewed everything as an eternal crisis and were always in a rush. He said it was far different moving to the Midlands, and I think it gets less panicky the further north you go. Perhaps it's a regional condition?

That sounds like a pretty typical urban/rural, economically-productive/less-so distinction. In England that happens to line up somewhat along the N/S axis

But does that make Birmingham "the North"? I don't think so; although it is certainly north of London, it isn't the north and the attitudes in Brum are a bit different to Londonium.

Perhaps it's the London / out of London divide. The BBC certainly has a London-centric approach to news on its all-day news-recycling channel, I noticed.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#500

Post by maxehmookau »

72deluxe wrote: post #303
maxehmookau wrote: post #226

I'm always amazed at how fatalist about this sort of thing Londoners are. Like losing Uber will be a massive problem for a huge portion of the population. London has, by FAR, the best, cheapest and most efficient public transport in the entire UK. Uber is, yeah, cheaper than a black cab but also why is it cheaper? Worse working conditions, VC-subsidised, lower standards for vetting (as we've seen here!) It's not sust…

My friend who is from Woking said that southerners typically viewed everything as an eternal crisis and were always in a rush. He said it was far different moving to the Midlands, and I think it gets less panicky the further north you go. Perhaps it's a regional condition?

Agreed. I live and work in the second biggest city in the UK and our transport system is 10000% less reliable and more expensive than London. Yet it's still quite adequate. Trains come every 10 minutes, rather than every 2 minutes.
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