
French Uber protests block airports - mattcollins
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33267581
======
boothead
I took my wife to Paris last year. When I turned up a taxi tout (I assume for
an un-licensed taxi) offered to get us to our hotel (about 6 km away) for 100
euro. When I demurred he kindly lowered the price to 60 euro. I ordered an
uber, which picked us up in ~10 mins and the total cost was 20 euro.

So while I sympathize with taxi drivers, they really can't expect consumers to
not prefer something that's manifestly better for them.

BTW in London, before uber a black cab might cost me £60-70 to get home if I'd
missed a train. An uber now can be as little as £25, which is low enough that
I can just not worry about the terribly unreliable and sparse trains and plan
my trip home that way.

~~~
nicolasp
When someone comes to you to offer you a "taxi" service in France, it's pretty
certainly a scam (especially with a price like that). A licensed taxi has a
sign on the roof, doesn't randomly offer you its service, and its price is
regulated. It never would have cost you even 60€ for 6 km. It would have been
roughly the same as with the Uber, maybe a bit cheaper.

The question of whether you would prefer a licensed taxi or an Uber is a
different one which I won't get into for now :)

~~~
nothrabannosir
The problem is that I now have to know, for every country I visit, what their
taxi regulation laws are and how they enforce them. With Uber, I know the
brand, and I can just expect not to get scammed.

For international travelers it's the franchising aspect that is most
appealing.

~~~
exDM69
Uber operates in countries where their services are not in compliance with the
local legislation (or operate in a gray area), and are operating until they
get to a court case that will decide whether it is legal or not.

So if you don't know the local taxi regulation, your Uber might get pulled
over by the cops who take the driver and you're left in the middle of nowhere.
This has happened in Helsinki, for example (where the local taxi service is
very reliable, albeit somewhat expensive and may be busy at certain hours).

In general, when visiting a country, you are expected to roughly know what the
local legislation is.

~~~
SilasX
So getting pulled over for using a trusted brand with a reputation at stake
instead of the local tourist-preying cabs is supposed to be proof of the value
of taxi regulation?

~~~
exDM69
There are no tourist predator cabs in Helsinki because the cops stop anyone
suspected of running an illegal cab service, including Uber rides. Many of the
horror stories of getting ripped off in this thread have indeed been pirate
cabs with no regulation behind them.

There might be some reasonable middle ground but I'm quite happy paying for a
reliable, regulated service despite it's flaws rather than a wild west
situation.

~~~
SilasX
But the problem is that you can be taken advantage if even with a regulated
cab, and indeed people report that this is a typical experience.

Legal != no rip-off

And I know there is a regulated dispute resolution procedure. But so far
Uber/Lyft seem to be a much better process for that too.

------
kaa2102
This actually does present a dilemma for working class folks. The article
indicates that taxi drivers have experienced a loss in income of 30-40%. I
don't imagine French taxi drivers earn a whole lot of money. Moreover, an idea
could be that the French taxi drivers could just switch over to Uber. The tax
driver may be stuck if they have already paid a certain amount of a car,
registration, etc.

Also, they may not be able to make as much with Uber. Buzz Feed News estimated
that US Uber drivers can make $34,164 per year. French laws may also include
benefits for driving a taxi vs. being an independent contractor with no
benefits with Uber.

Services like AirBnB and Uber can be great for entrepreneurs, investors, part-
time workers, and consumers. We should be reminded that disrupting industries
sometimes creates losers in the working and middle class that don't have an
easy way to switch jobs in some countries or economies.

~~~
fab13n
The main problem is that taxi medallions cost a lot (€200-250K in Paris, up to
€300K in some southern cities). Independent taxi drivers got indebted to buy
them, and generally expected to resell them at a profit to finance their
retirement.

Another thing that isn't much discussed in medias, is that a few companies,
most notably G7, own most medallions and lease them to (poor) drivers, often
together with the car and the radio reservation service. Those companies
typically have received those medallions for free from the state, decades ago,
before reselling them became legalized. Those companies obviously pull some
strings, both stirring up drivers and talking in minister cabinets.

Anyway eventually they're fucked, Uber or no Uber: autonomous cars will make
taxis obsolete at warping speed. Taxi drivers are fucked that much harder than
Uber's, because they'll be left with a worthless medallion and its 20 years
mortgage. (It's also likely to make private car ownership marginal, something
akin to owning your own horse in the XXth century, thus hitting car
manufacturing pretty badly once enough autonomous cars have been produced, but
that's another quagmire).

~~~
te_chris
There is very little proof that the techno-utopian version of autonomous
vehicles is going to play out the way people like you want it to.

Sure, on the surface Taxi's are dead, but I would wager that it will be a lot
slower than people on here think, not least for the difficulty of cleaning
autonomous cabs.

~~~
yourapostasy
There are even investors and syndicates inserting themselves into the
medallion markets now [1]. When you see even these market participants pulling
out altogether, then I can easily believe the autonomous passenger vehicle is
within 5-20 years of obliterating the taxi industry (though I doubt that will
happen). I'm not aware of a way to short medallions, so I can't tell if that
is going on. So far as I can tell, these people are still participating in the
medallion market and various secondary markets, despite the recent downward
tick of medallion prices. I'm guessing they and the industry in general have a
lot of political pull, and are counting on that influence to wring another few
decades out of conventional taxis before autonomous options mutate them into a
different-looking industry.

Unless there is a really broad-based public backlash that makes it political
suicide to continue licensing however, even if autonomous vehicles are
ubiquitous I can't see municipalities and various institutions and agencies in
general giving up the affiliated revenue stream. Even if we end up with
something like Johnny Cabs [2] and no humans drive taxis any longer, I expect
some form of government-imposed licensing to still exist.

[1] [http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/21/add-taxi-medallion-
investo...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/21/add-taxi-medallion-investors-to-
the-list-of-ubers-enemies/)

[2] [http://www.empireonline.com/features/helpful-movie-robots-
th...](http://www.empireonline.com/features/helpful-movie-robots-that-will-
ruin-your-life/p10)

~~~
fab13n
The thing is, autonomous vehicles don't need to take the taxi niche frontally.
Here's how it goes, if legislation is too slow:

1\. families buy one autonomous car instead of several driven ones: when dad's
arrived at work, the car goes back to become mom's car for the day. With a
nice twist: when the car goes and fetch kids from soccer, mom doesn't have to
be in it.

2\. People pool cars privately: one car for a couple of families if they're
light users, X/Y cars for X families for more intensive users. It's shared
property, neither a taxi activity nor even a company providing a service.

2bis. Some AirBnB of autonomous cars facilitates mutual lending of cars, in
parallel with the development of privately organized pools

3\. Cars are leased instead of bought upfront, from companies embedded with
the AirBnB-of-autonomous-cars. What you have now is effectively an autonomous
taxi company.

The economic pressure to get rid of drivers will be enormous. Sure, car makers
and drivers won't like it, but all of the money that won't go there will be up
for grab by other sectors. Think of trucks: not only autonomous trucks will
drive 23h a day, but everyone who sells anything moved by truck will have
their margin augmented by skipping drivers' salaries.

~~~
yourapostasy
Excellent observations. For trucks, there are other big downstream effects.
The big diesel engines preferentially run continuously, and with autonomous
driving we'll see run times between engine shutdowns increase pretty steeply.
Manufacturers can tune engine development accordingly so continuous running is
the norm. Diesel consumption per unit mass will enjoy a marginal improvement;
diesel repair shops will see a marginal decline. If we see concurrent
automation of refueling, truck stops will experience a dramatic decline.

If medium and light truck bodies are aligned to a standardized set of chassis,
then some of the fleets of delivery trucks that lay idle half the day or
longer today can run around the clock, swapping bodies and switching duties
when needed.

If we can automate quiet garbage pickup, then a garbage truck that usually
only runs during the day can run around the clock.

If we can automate safe delivery of liquid fuels, then entire fleets of
various fuel delivery trucks will lay off a lot of drivers.

The pattern I'm seeing is the actual driving might get automated, but the
endpoint activities might not be subject to automation just yet, but that
might only be a matter of time and possibly standardization.

------
spanishcow
Uber is an unlawful business that tries to by-pass Labour law. If Uber model
is imposed workers will be working for big companies without proper rights or
protections. I want cheaper and better services but never at the cost of other
people's rights.

With time driverless cars will be the norm. Until then I want that the people
that drive me home have as many rights as them deserve.

(What will happen when machines are able to do all manual work is another more
complex discussion)

~~~
emodendroket
Don't forget that Uber are congesting the road, polluting, and going around
without adequate insurance, all issues that affect even people who never use
the service.

~~~
briandear
So are taxis. So is every other form of transport that uses a road. I never
ride the bus but in Avignon, I get to wait behind long congested lines of
buses clogging the ring road when I just want to get my daughter from her
little school. I never ride those buses. Also your logical fallacy is a little
silly: how does going around 'without insurance' harm people that don't use
the service? That statement is just untrue. ALL drivers in France must have
insurance.

~~~
kuschku
Actually, the insurance problem is more complex: Normal drivers insurance does
not pay if you were transporting a stranger for-profit. That’s why you need a
special insurance for that, which most uber X drivers do not have

------
olivierduval
French Taxi drivers are knowned to be unfriendly and not quite honest, and
lazy. They're trying to keep their business protected instead of trying to get
better. Now, they even use violence against Uber-drivers & Uber-customers.
BTW, they don't give a shit of their own customers...

At the beginning, when Uber opened in France, I could understand their
problem. But now, they just went to far: instead of being better to keep their
business, they just want to keep their business by being the only players,
leaving no choice to customers but to use them. And that's plain wrong for
me...

In fact, I think that I would support an action from Uber against Taxi
syndicates & French government support, either in the street or in the
European Court of Justice

Disclosure: I'm a french parisian and never used Uber (yet) but used Taxi from
time to time... ;)

~~~
dominotw
Same here in Chicago. The primary reason I avoid cabs and prefer uber.

1\. They are rude.

2\. They don't accept credit cards and often lie to you about their CC machine
not working.

3\. Cabs Stink.

4\. They have annoying little screens with ads in the backseat.

5\. Some of them have no air conditioning.

~~~
kungfooguru
2\. They lose money and have to wait in long lines to get their money when you
use a credit card. Don't blame the worker.

4\. Sure, kind of annoying I guess...

I've had far more really enjoyable cab rides with Chicago drivers than I have
had ones that are even slightly uncomfortable or rude.

~~~
namlem
Who cares if it's their fault or not? All that matters is that the service
sucks and there's a better alternative.

------
shiggerino
I hate calling for cabs, waiting in a queue, answering all sorts of irrelevant
questions beyond where I want to be picked up, only to have the cab show up at
the wrong place anyway. So Uber is definitely scratching an itch. An itch that
the traditional taxi companies can just as easily scratch with an app of their
own.

So they'd better clear the road and start hacking, because this strike won't
save them in the long run.

~~~
derrida
I love simply raising my arm to have a driver arrive to take me anywhere,
having a conversation in a way that two only two total strangers can, &
arriving at my destination for the equivalent of one hours work on minimum
wage (Sydney).

Cabs.

I love that this is profitable, and is a job that lots of folk can get. One
cabbie I talked to once used to program VAX machines.

~~~
ebiester
So, because you live and travel around populated places, you don't see the
problem. Therefore, it must not exist.

In SF, it's great if you life in the mission, bad if you live in the Richmond.
(Actually, there's a good app that works with the cabs there, but before
that...)

In Boston, don't live in Dorchester or JP. Calling a cab here is unreliable.

Living in a more sparse city, the only way to get a cab is dispatch. It's
terrible.

~~~
rtpg
>Living in a more sparse city, the only way to get a cab is dispatch. It's
terrible.

Isn't Uber basically dispatch? Or are there extra fees involved? Serious
question

~~~
ebiester
It's essentially dispatch, but done in a customer-friendly way.

------
DickingAround
They're going to be double-angry when self-driving cars take both of those
jobs.

~~~
anticon
Perhaps in 100 years some of the easiest roads will be driven by self driving
cars. I doubt any of these drivers are too worried.

~~~
olalonde
Google plans to make their self-driving car available to the public by 2020
[0]. Perhaps they aren't going to hit that deadline but I doubt they'll miss
it by 80 years.

[0] [http://www.ibtimes.com/google-inc-says-self-driving-car-
will...](http://www.ibtimes.com/google-inc-says-self-driving-car-will-be-
ready-2020-1784150)

~~~
emodendroket
Great, they're saying that, but, on the other hand, they only operate them in
a small area in Mountain View because the level of detail the things need to
operate is just not there anywhere in the US. In addition, the driverless cars
have trouble dealing with temporary road closures and the like -- the kind of
stuff human drivers have to deal with regularly. It's not at all clear that
this is going to be a practical technology anytime soon, despite all the hype.

[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-
obstacles...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-
for-googles-self-driving-cars/)

> Would you buy a self-driving car that couldn’t drive itself in 99 percent of
> the country? Or that knew nearly nothing about parking, couldn’t be taken
> out in snow or heavy rain, and would drive straight over a gaping pothole?

> If your answer is yes, then check out the Google Self-Driving Car, model
> year 2014.

------
mwill
Related discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9776613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9776613)

------
sunseb
Have a look at those images :

[http://www.spi0n.com/greve-taxis-vs-uber-paris/](http://www.spi0n.com/greve-
taxis-vs-uber-paris/)

------
monk_e_boy
I wouldn't know anything about Uber if it weren't for all these protests.

~~~
joosters
You're posting on Hacker News, where there are (non-protest) Uber stories
every day...

------
jayess
I was in Paris in April and we used Uber twice. Both drivers were super
friendly, attentive, and helpful. Neither spoke English, but we got by just
fine. I was disappointed that there was no Uber in Rome as well.

------
louithethrid
Taxi Drivers disrupted by Ueber disrupted by Google SelfDriving Carse
disrupted by ...

Ueber looks allready historic and they havent even won yet.

------
Stately
Because that's worked out sooooo well for taxi drivers in the rest of European
cities...

------
MichaelCrawford
A while back I found a grievous bug in CERNLIB, one that withoubt a doubt
resulted in erroneous results in the physics journals.

The day I blasted this news throughout every corner of the physics community,
a CERN staffmember sent me a patch. "Here's what you need, but the guy who
maintains that part of CERNLIB wont accept it because Im british and hes
french."

Dont Fuck With The French.

------
mrbig4545
The French will riot over anything.

~~~
kirk21
Why work if you can riot?

~~~
grp
How riot if you are forced to work?

~~~
saiya-jin
why not take significant portion of the country (ie those commuting daily by
trains to work, school etc) as your hostages? how can they defend? pathetic
cowardly behavior in my book...

------
sauere
Europe 2015

------
redwood
Look there needs to be a French Uber for this to work. Simple as that. We
can't take global revenue forever. It's not fair to these countries. Lucky for
them, we're helping them innovate

------
hnsayzwhat
Right on! Down with Uber. Make them follow the same rules as taxis!

