
German court issues nationwide ban on Uber driving services - sebst
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/18/uber-germany-ban-idUSFWN0WJ04W20150318
======
teekert
Here in the Netherlands Uber drivers are being driven off the road, threatened
and they have their cars marked
([http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1038/Rotterdam/article/detail/3911575...](http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1038/Rotterdam/article/detail/3911575/2015/03/17/Weer-
Rotterdamse-Uber-snorder-klemgereden-en-bestickerd.dhtml))

Its crazy. I for one can't wait until the taxi mob is competed off the market.
Taxi drivers here are more often than not complete a-holes that try to scam
you every chance they get. I for one welcome uber with open arms. I'm sorry
for the nice taxi drivers but your business is deeply ill.

~~~
danieldk
The problem here is unfair competition: in The Netherlands taxis are bound by
the 'Wet Personenvervoer' (Law persons transport). Uber can encourage drivers
to ignore the law, because it has deep pockets to cover for legal costs of
drivers.

I agree that the taxi market is ripe for disruption, but this is only fair if
other taxis are not bound by that law as well.

Another question is if we want complete deregulation. E.g. I would personally
want to be sure that the driver has proper insurance, etc.

~~~
ptaipale
Every car should have a proper insurance, right? At least here it's the law.

~~~
dagw
Every car has to have third party insurance. Basically covering any damage you
do to someone not in your car. Insurance covering damages to passengers in
your car is a different insurance, and insurance covering passengers in your
car because they are paying you to drive then somewhere is different a
insurance again.

~~~
ptaipale
Over here (Finland), the mandatory insurance covers passengers (and driver)
also in your car, not just third parties. Different countries obviously have
different practices. I can see that this is a problem in countries where the
vehicle's insurance does not cover its own passengers.

(In fact, the mandatory car insurance here even covers personal damages of
third parties at fault if they are pedestrians or are riding a bicycle; i.e.
if a bicyclist runs a red light and collides with a car and hurts himself, the
care cost is carried by the car's insurance. If the bicyclist hits a tree, the
tree has no insurance... this applies to personal injuries only, not the
broken bike. Any damage to the car is covered by the bicyclist's insurance if
any.)

~~~
Vik1ng
You sure there is no difference between passenger and paying passenger?

~~~
ptaipale
Not for getting insurance compensation as passenger. For premiums paid by the
driver there well could be a difference.

------
random3
Disclaimer: I'm an uber Uber user.

It seem that the German government ensures that everyone gets the same version
of the laws. I don't see how that's wrong.

There are generally regulations (and not a few) wrt taxi. Drivers need to pass
an exam, get licenses, pay a lot on various taxes, insurance, etc. Most of
all, however, there's a limited number of taxi medallions.

Perhaps not all these do make sense, but that's not an excuse not to obey
them.

So perhaps a government authority that ensures that it's own policies are
respected is not unexpected.

So yes, Uber contributes a lot to the quality of the transportation. That's
why I'm using it. But I don't see how that has anything to do with the fact
that it's one the verge of the law (good or bad) or even against the law in
some cases - which is what the German authorities decided.

I don't think this has anything to do with their self-driving cars or the
German government taking care of the unemployment problem. In fact, it's
probably helping employment.

Now how did this play out in the US?

~~~
minthd
How is it(removing uber services) helping employment,given we know that uber
increases demand for taxi services ?

~~~
buro9
How does it increase demand for taxi services?

If your answer is by making it dramatically cheaper by externalising the costs
of running a sustainable taxi business... then how does having a greater
number of people employed on wages that they cannot afford to live on benefit
anyone?

~~~
ptaipale
It makes it easier to order a taxi. For instance in the case of Germany, I've
sometimes walked a distance simply because I'm not sure if my German is good
enough to handle the phone call to the taxi dispatcher, or just because I
don't know the number of the taxi company/dispatcher/order central. With an
app, I know how to use it.

~~~
PinguTS
That is very very lame excuse. Because it suggests that you are unable to use
Google and your preferred App store.

There is an App for it, called "Taxi Deutschland" (how obvious is THAT?)
[https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/taxi-
deutschland/id454467694...](https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/taxi-
deutschland/id454467694?mt=8)

There is even a German wide number, which works in any major city: 22456 from
you cell including text service
[http://www.22456taxi.de/](http://www.22456taxi.de/)

~~~
ptaipale
Thanks for the Taxi Deutschland hint. Unfortunately that app freezes on
startup in my Android phone (I just get the screen with a selection of
tutorial or starting app, but it locks up there.)

The app seems to be in German only, and it is of course Germany-specific. I
can deal with that pretty OK but not all potential users can. Uber uses the
same app for any country.

(Downloading an app local to a country while roaming there may be a rather
expensive idea, BTW.)

------
MAGZine
I think that Uber has done tremendous amounts to modernizing the taxi
industry, and maybe even for breaking down some taxi monopolies. These are
both good things.

I can't comment on UberX, but regular Uber should absolutely be subject to
regular taxi/safety/liability clauses. Which isn't to say that those clauses
couldn't be modernized, but IS to say that it should also not be a surprise
when a company gets a nationwide ban for violating them. Regular Uber is
exactly a taxi system, with a state-of-the-art automated dispatch and billing
system.

~~~
DasIch
I don't see how it has done so at all, at least in Germany. Precisely because
the industry is so highly regulated I don't see how Uber offers anything that
I don't get with a regular taxi.

~~~
anon1385
You get the thrill of drivers who are uninsured and poorly paid (once you
factor in the capital costs of the vehicle and the cost of vehicle
maintenance). Welcome to the libertarian paradise.

~~~
billions
Uber provides, faster, safer, cheaper, more comfortable service than any
government run taxi service. Without a driver rating system, I remember
getting frequently being asked to leave the taxi when requesting short
distance rides. Taxis would often drive at dangerous speeds to acquire more
customers. Taxis were typically driven by foreigners which could not find
other jobs. If Uber is as low paying as you describe, why is it that we get
more intelligent drivers? Surely they are intelligent enough to quit if the
pay is too low.

Uber users like myself vote on each ride with their credit cards to keep these
services going. And with that, it means that the day Uber does something
poorly, we have the freedom to immediately switch to a competitor.

~~~
detaro
> Without a driver rating system, I remember getting frequently being asked to
> leave the taxi when requesting short distance rides.

In Germany? Not saying that it doesn't happen, but it is illegal. (Which often
is an important argument to why Taxis are protected against competition, since
they are forced to provide services that are not always profitable)

~~~
adyus
What's illegal and what's enforceable are two different things, particularly
in Eastern Europe.

Uber just launched in Romania and it's having a hard time getting off the
ground. I asked a taxi driver why he wouldn't join. He said he'd be scared for
his safety from other taxi drivers.

Anecdotally, getting a cab from a major hub (airport, train or bus station) in
Bucharest, without calling dispatch, entails a fixed price and the meter
turned off. Illegal? Surely.

The main advantage of western countries, culminating in the U.S., is that laws
are enforced regularly and predictably, most of the time.

Germany is doing just that. They're old laws, sure, but they must be enforced
until they get a change to revise them.

------
spdustin
No oversight. No privacy. No standards.

Can't say I blame them.

~~~
Karunamon
Because the oversight, privacy, and standards are working _ever_ so well..

[1] [http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/taxi-
driver-20...](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/taxi-
driver-20-years-raping-passenger-article-1.1789225)

[2] [http://coconutgrovegrapevine.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-
county...](http://coconutgrovegrapevine.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-county-taxi-
cabs-are-unsafe-and.html)

and so on..

Call me when your "overseen, private, and up to standards" taxi has an
immediate rating system that will cause the driver to effectively lose their
job if they continue to provide crappy drives.

I do blame them. Bureaucracy sucks, and I can see why people would want to
subvert it. Government's just mad they're not getting their vig. That's all
this boils down to.

(Fixed link 1)

~~~
wahsd
The problem is that Uber wants all the gain without really taking on any of
the responsibility, costs, or consequences beyond the bare minimum for PR and
marketing purposes. In essence, they set up a system to parasitize an industry
through corrupt practices.

I am all about competition, but they don't want to compete, they want to
undercut the market to destroy it and corner it so that they can then
implement regulatory capture at a later point.

~~~
Karunamon
I disagree with you that it's "corrupt". Why should someone who wants to drive
someone other places need to jump through more hoops than the ones Uber has in
front of them? (Background check, constant ratings?)

And if you take issue with Uber for other reasons (shady recruiting practices
come to mind), there are other rideshare services that do not have those
problems.

~~~
wahsd
I'm talking, exactly, about the "other reasons", of which their shading
recruiting practices are only one aspect. Just off the top of my head comes to
mind that Uber was caught calling Lyft cars and then ditching or cancelling
them or something like that. Another aspect is how they are manipulating the
public to fight their self-interested battles with government for private-
profit.

Like I said, I have nothing against competition, which is really one of the
concerns people should have, because Uber knows that they are currently in a
land-grab type of scenario to corner the market, especially right before
autonomous vehicles come on line. Due to the nature efficiency characteristics
of the future transpiration system and gargantuan barriers to entry, Uber is
attempting to shut out the competition in order to put a stranglehold on
transpiration. They'd eventually get broken up, but in the mean time, they can
execute regulatory capture, corrupt our government in the good ol' fashioned
way through lobbyists, and make billions if not trillions in the mean time.

Sure, the taxi system is corrupt down to the bone in many, if not all cities.
But what Uber is doing, is riding proclaiming they are the handsome night in
shining armor on a brilliantly white horse, when in fact, under the shiny
armor is a wolf dressed in sheep's clothing.

------
andrewmutz
More detail here: [http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/german-court-ban-
uber/](http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/german-court-ban-uber/)

~~~
struppi
The main reason (IIUC) for the verdict was (a little bit simplified):

Most of the drivers for uberPOP break german laws because they have no proper
license and insurance to be commercial drivers.

The question was if Uber breaks the law ("Personenbeförderungsgesetz") by
simply acting as a broker for those drivers - And the judge said yes, they do.

~~~
pluma
The thing isn't just that Uber may break the law, but that it encourages
others to break the law. Call it anti-libertarian, but in Germany a company
shares responsibility for the behaviour it is creating. They would have to put
controls in place (within reason) to ensure that Uber drivers don't break the
law -- but of course they don't because they're well-aware that that would
reduce the number of drivers and drive up costs and prices.

Basically, Uber is breaking the law when it comes to passenger transportation
the same way Mega was breaking the law when it came to file sharing. It
created an environment that promoted illegal activities.

------
fotcorn
The permit to commercially transport people costs 421 Euro:

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FF%25C3%25BChrerschein_zur_Fahrgastbef%25C3%25B6rderung&edit-
text=)

Far too much for some casual Uber drivers.

~~~
detaro
That is necessary, but not enough. To operate a taxi you also need a taxi
license (which sometimes just is a 50 € fee, sometimes has to be taken over
from an existing taxi company, all depends on the city) + of course insurance
etc.

You can use it to operate a "rental car with driver", like UberBlack does, but
that has other limitations to be not too taxi-like (most notably you can't
take new passengers or their orders while on the road, you have to return to
your home location after every trip)

~~~
pluma
"Funkmietwagen" (rental cars with a driver you that picks you up and drops you
off and can be hired instantly by phone) are actually very common in most
parts of Germany I've been to. Many businesses offer you to call one instead
if you ask them to call you a taxi (though I think they have to explicitly
tell you it's a Funkmietwagen rather than a taxi).

That said, Uber isn't really solving a problem here. There are already call-a-
taxi apps (though they don't seem to have been very successful) and the only
value add Uber provides is that it encourages an entirely illegal business
model (i.e. transporting persons without the required qualifications, no
insurance coverage, no guarantees and no reliable pricing).

Sure, UberBlack may be a nice idea if an ordinary taxi is beneath you or
socially inappropriate, but other than that Uber simply doesn't offer anything
new.

Note that Germany and the EU in general have very strong customer protection
laws. The health, safety and protection of the passenger is an actual concern
in the local market. Uber (and similar "disruptive" services) gain most of
their appeal from entirely disregarding that.

It doesn't matter how appealing your business idea is if it doesn't work
within the restrictions of consumer protection.

~~~
detaro
Yes, I should have added that this is fairly common already. I just wanted to
add it since there was a bit of confusion about which Uber products are
allowed/forbidden and why.

And this is the legal framework for Uber to provide new services. If a good
app + the driver ratings people seem to like + ... really provides a market
advantage, then they should go nuts there ;)

------
jokoon
I just wanted to see if I could search for someone to drive me to some
specific grocery store for a specific day, to see how much that would cost me
if I would plan in advance.

It's a 15min ride, and the bus service is poor for that particular route. I
need to carry a lot of food, and on welfare aldi is a must for me, so I would
gladly pay for gas money plus some more instead of taking the bus, especially
since I carry frozen food.

I started entering my info. Closed it immediately when it asked for my credit
card before I could search for anything.

I'm sorry, but if uber is getting money from rides, I really think it should
at least play nice with governments and laws, especially when it has so much
value on the stock market. It's a matter of respect, being disruptive doesn't
excuse everything.

Building and regulating civilization has a cost, if you want to improve
people's lives, don't be so greedy about it. It doesn't require so much money
to help people find each other for car rides.

I totally understand that cab licenses are against the libertarian's dream,
but when I sense unjustified money behind it, it sets me off immediately. The
internet doesn't feel very free, it's just another new land for money makers,
and I'm often okay with it, but here, I'm not.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Building and regulating civilization has a cost, if you want to improve
> people 's lives, don't be so greedy about it._

This. I wish many a company took it to heart. But then again, a lot of
companies (and startups) don't care about improving people's lives; some
unfortunately use the talk about "improving lives" as a marketing angle.

As for Uber, it's pretty clear now that they don't care about improving
anything else than the contents of their wallets - I'm surprised that no one
banned them yet for literally being assholes.

~~~
jokoon
I'm sure they are being pissed on by governments because they're a net loss to
society. People just like to use shiny smartphone to order a taxi.

I hate that new libertarian trend of pretending to solve a socio economical
problem, while it requires a smartphone and a fast dataplan. The army
developped those techs and now it's being used for profits and profits. Oddly
there is so little money involved in techs like bittorrent or openstreetmap,
etc.

Investors should really think about having a legitimate improvement for
society. I mean if I was an investor, I would be so much proud of creating
free services. That's the only way honest improvements has ever worked, when
it was not so much profit driven.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I mean if I was an investor, I would be so much proud of creating free
> services. That 's the only way honest improvements has ever worked, when it
> was not so much profit driven._

And that's why you and I are not investors, but just poor developers who like
making video games. There aren't many investors out there who care about
actual improvement for society; I might hesitantly point to few names, but
that's it. For the rest it's just another level of money-making-money game.

------
Chichikov
I haven't bothered to look at Russians' responses to Uber, but the whole idea
must seem strange to any Russian. It has been normal in Russia since the
fifties to flag down cars (i.e. everyday, private traffic) on the street and
pay a driver for a lift. Usually the fare is cheaper than a taxi (I don't
remember ever calling a taxi in Russia). The drawback is that not all drivers
are headed in your direction, but then again, it's only a matter of time till
someone who is comes along (this problem is further ameliorated by drivers who
moonlight as gypsy cabs and will take you wherever for the right price).

My point is that the service that Uber provides is viable primarily due to
largely baseless social conventions (i.e. middle-class paranoia). If the fare
is all that matters to a given consumer, then any car/driver will do. If
security matters more than fare, then taxis will do. Uber is operating in a
gray area between these extremes and as soon as A) we cease fearing our
neighbors (I believe that the decline of suburbia and renewed urbanization
will eventually take us there) and B) taxi services will begin offering better
technical solutions, Uber's service will become largely obsolete.

------
Tomte
Interesting point: Uber is (rightfully) continuing their service, because the
ban only goes into effect when the plaintiff pledges a security, to compensate
Uber's loss, in case this ban is reversed.

I have no idea if the plaintiff wants to take that risk.

------
Usu
I'm wondering whether the ban also applies to uber taxi, they had a big
marketing campaign just last week in Berlin where you were able to take a ride
for free for a couple of days [1]

[1]
[http://blog.uber.com/freeubertaxi_berlin_en](http://blog.uber.com/freeubertaxi_berlin_en)

~~~
bradleyjg
Just uberpop it looks like. More details in this article:
[http://www.ft.com/intl/fastft/293403/uber-ride-sharing-
banne...](http://www.ft.com/intl/fastft/293403/uber-ride-sharing-banned-again-
germany)

------
serve_yay
Just Uber specifically? So you can just download a different app and order
rides again? Why?

~~~
fredoliveira
Other, competing services to uber, aren't functioning (or at least not as
pervasively) in germany.

------
lleims
I don't understand why Uber (not UberPOP, which in theory operates with
licensed drivers) has been also banned.

Can anyone explain why?

------
tessierashpool
The caveat with disruption: Sometimes an industry which is very tightly
regulated, or which has a lot of middlemen, has these obstructions for a
reason.

A taxi service holds enormous opportunities for kidnappers or rapists. I'm a
man, which basically disappears the rape risk, but there are many Central and
South American countries where getting in a taxi could be quite risky for me,
and could involve _me_ disappearing. even some parts of Mexico.

Recent related stories make Uber look really bad:

[http://boingboing.net/2014/11/19/uber-can-track-your-one-
nig...](http://boingboing.net/2014/11/19/uber-can-track-your-one-night.html)
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-
dig...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-digging-up-
dirt-on-journalists) [http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/uber-but-for-real-
estate...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/uber-but-for-real-estate-
disputes#.yiVDk2w15)

Also, just to state the obvious, both Uber drivers and regular taxi drivers
have logical incentives for driving unsafely.

In this context, I have no problem with governments wanting to regulate Uber
literally to death, at least outside of California. I understand cabs are
completely unacceptable garbage in California, and the HN audience definitely
skews Californian, but cabs are gold in Chicago, London, and New York, and
probably quite a few other places too. Maybe Germany is one of those places.

Also, although I'm sympathetic to libertarians, disruption doesn't always fix
things. The Internet crippled the music industry, but introduced stacks of new
middlemen in the process. Ask Zoe Keating how that "democratization" turned
out.

[http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-
should-i...](http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/108898194009/what-should-i-do-
about-youtube)

In music, the corporate middlemen are this pernicious infestation, which just
reappears after you thought you'd wiped it out. Artists have to sacrifice a
lot to develop their art to a serious level, and a lot of music performance
takes place in situations where people are celebrating (i.e., drunk or high,
late at night). So somebody has to provide security, as well as business
sense. There's a lot of opportunities for middlemen to get their middle on,
and disrupting a market, under those conditions, just means shuffling in a new
deck of middlemen. It doesn't change the game.

In the same way, my guess is that disrupting a market which is inherently full
of criminality risks - incentives to drive unsafely, opportunities for
kidnapping and rape - means you just shuffle the deck of regulations.

Yet another criminality risk: taxi services of any kind, whether Uber or not,
hold terrific opportunities for armed robbery. In some cities, being a cab
driver is very dangerous, for this reason.

So, if Uber kills the entire taxi industry, then governments will have to
scrap their taxi regulations and re-build a similarly gigantic regulatory
infrastructure around Uber instead.

I think Uber is a really good lesson for entrepreneurs in how a market can
look awesome but actually suck.

------
1971genocide
Stuff like this is going to be more and more common as govt doesn't want 25+ %
of their population to be unemployed due to nerds churning out code.

~~~
ptaipale
This sounds a bit of a Luddite approach to me. Yeah, all those spinning
Jennies make weavers unemployed.

~~~
jjoonathan
Right, but if you blame the proximal cause of unemployment then you don't have
to address the underlying social issues or ask hard questions about the
legitimacy of a system that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

~~~
ptaipale
Good point. Spinning Jennies and Uber taxis work as scapegoats; often the
mental change is the hardest.

~~~
sfk
What mental change? To accept boring non-innovations as something fundamental?

~~~
jjoonathan
No, to accept the possibility that we will need to institute economic policy
that decreases the supply of unskilled labor without punishing the unskilled
laborers for working below capacity.

We've done it before and we'll do it again, but in a society that (correctly)
sees hard work as a personal virtue and is controlled by people with a vested
interest in conflating the personal virtue with the societal virtue of
promoting hard work, there's a fight every time the policies need tweaking.

------
snitko
My, god people. The number of those supporting the useless regulation is so
great it astounds me. If you want to regulate something as simple as driving
people around, claiming drivers need licences, permissions and passing some
sort of exams certifying they are indeed capable of driving cars with
passengers, why don't we regulate something much more critical, like software
development?

Software runs the world these days, you can't just let people with no licences
write shitty code. Politicians and bureaucrats should join their forces and
decide whether each individual programmer is of a certain level. If not, he is
banned from writing code and should be fined or imprisoned if he ever tries to
do that.

Or let's regulate musicians. You know, it would do good. I'm so tired of all
these useless crappy bands that write all the same music, thinking they are
different. Even though I don't listen to them I also think others shouldn't be
listening to them too, as this influences people's tastes in a direction I
cannot approve of. So yes, licences for musicians!

~~~
jdietrich
I'm so sick of government interfering in business. Why the hell are there so
many pointless regulations governing electrical appliances? If I want to build
a toaster with undersized wiring, no safety earth, no thermal cut-offs and no
flame retardant plastics, why should the government be able to stop me? Why
should I be burdened with the cost of product liability insurance? I can just
base my company in the Cayman Islands and dodge the inevitable lawsuit when my
product kills someone.

Taxis are regulated for a reason. I want to know that when I get into a taxi,
the vehicle is roadworthy. I want to know that the driver is competent and
medically fit to drive. I want to know that he isn't a convicted rapist. I
want to know that his insurance is still valid when carrying paying
passengers. Uber provides none of those guarantees, but intelligent regulation
does all of that without creating a significant barrier to entry.

~~~
snitko
Notice how you constantly say "I want". What if I, on the other hand, don't
want to know those things and am simply concerned with the price, prepared to
take a risk here? What right on earth do you have to tell other people what
ratio of risk/reward is acceptable for them? Yet, this is exactly what
regulation does: it says "this is in the public interest", yet "public" is
very different in its preferences towards prices, comfort, risk and other
factors.

If you want a safe taxi, by all means, use the government approved service. I
for one couldn't care less, so I'm gonna go with a cheaper service. Everyone
should have that choice.

~~~
DanBC
Why should the people maimed by those cut-price cabs suffer from the poor risk
assessment of the people using those cut price cabs?

~~~
snitko
Why would they suffer? If you are concerned with your safety and trust the
government vetting process, you are free to use government-licenced taxi
services exclusively.

~~~
Tomte
You really don't get it, do you?

Road traffic is dangerous. Not only for people sitting inside those cars, but
also very much so for everyone else.

The pedestrian your cheap taxi without working brakes just ran over didn't
choose your taxi.

You did. And you're proudly saying that you have assessed the risk and... are
willing to let other people take it.

