
Virginia orders Uber, Lyft to stop operating in state - leephillips
http://wtop.com/120/3636415/Va-orders-Uber-Lyft-to-stop-operating
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tswartz
>> the DMV urged riders to make informed choices about which transportation
services they use. The DMV says riders should check that cars have seatbelts,
current license plate and inspection stickers.

Amazed at the reasons they point to in an attempt to justify their actions. In
all my encounters with Lyft and Uber the cars conditions are well above a
taxi. A typical taxi ride includes squealing brakes and bottoming out due to
suspension falling apart.

~~~
thenmar
Not that I disagree, but it's not like you'd notice if a car hadn't been
inspected for years and had a non-functioning airbag. At least not until you
needed it.

~~~
mikeash
You would in Virginia, since yearly inspections are required and the sticker
is displayed prominently in the windshield.

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john_b
> _" "I urge the citizens of Virginia to protect their families by using only
> companies that appear on DMV's website as licensed transportation services.
> If it's not on the list, it's not recommended," says DMV Commissioner
> Richard Holcomb."_

"Save the children!" plus an appeal to authority. If your argument has no
substance, you might as well go full fallacy.

~~~
tzs
Appeal to authority is only a fallacy when misused.

~~~
seacious
Very nearly all of modern science is based on appeals to authority. I don't
have the training or time to validate even 1/10'000th of the things that a
modern 'scientific' person is supposed to believe.

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DigitalSea
Won't somebody please think of the children and the broken taxi industry!
Before Uber and Lyft hit the scene, you only had a small pool to pick your
taxi from only to discover all major taxi companies are in cahoots together
anyway.

Uber to me is reliable, it's cheaper and it's safer. I couldn't count the
number of times I've ordered a taxi that just didn't show up (presumably they
took a more profitable fare elsewhere), rude drivers, drivers that speed
without any kind of accountability. You complain to the taxi company and they
couldn't really care less.

Instead of embracing change, taxi companies are clinging to their lobbyist and
broken ways. Look how well that turned out for the music industry when they
tried to fight digital music and streaming... It's the same situation
happening all over again. Uber and Lyft will eventually win, it's only a
matter of time.

~~~
droopyEyelids
There are many different municipalities with many different qualities of taxi
service.

And there are many different laws affecting who can operate taxi services in
those areas.

I don't know how things were in Virginia, but in Chicago regular taxis are
vastly better than uberx/lyft in every way except price. Also, taxi drivers
are required to have a chauffeur's license that tests them for TB along with
city knowledge.

Uber works well for you and many of us. But don't portray this as a hero's
fight against a broken industry when in reality it's a nuanced decision and
there are valid points of view on both sides of the argument.

~~~
andymcsherry
I've used both Uber and the local taxi service in San Francisco, Los Angeles
and Columbus, OH. I can tell you that Uber is vastly superior in every way.
The cars are cleaner and newer, the drivers are friendlier, the service is
cheaper, getting a ride is easier, and with Uber I don't need to deal with the
inevitable argument about why I'm trying to pay with a credit card instead of
cash.

~~~
waps
> I don't need to deal with the inevitable argument about why I'm trying to
> pay with a credit card instead of cash.

This.

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Nursie
I'm sorry, I know there's a religion of disruption going on around these
parts, and I know that there's disdain for established business, and
regulations that seem to keep new players out of the market, and unnecessary
bureaucracy and all of these things...

But sometimes, just sometimes some of the regulations and restrictions are
legitimate consumer protection mechanisms that benefit all of us, and we
should think before we throw them out in the name of progress.

~~~
potatolicious
Agreed. There is a nuance to this that is frequently forgotten in tech
circles, where the government is pure evil and unrestricted free enterprise is
the definition of what is right and good.

That said, it's too bad that the two sides represent the extremes and there is
no entity representing the sane middle ground. On the one hand you have an
entrenched industry resistant to any form of change (and not willing to abuse
politics to do this), on the other hand you have companies that laugh in the
face of decades of learned consumer experience and have a history of abusing
the market to push out competitors (see: Uber and the call-and-cancel-against-
competitors debacle).

I'm for more taxis on roads. I'm for more technology in taxis. I'm for
transparent payments and real enforcement against bad drivers (and bad
passengers!). I'm also for proper licensing, proper insurance, consumer
protections (e.g., being kicked out of a cab for a surge pricing fare), and
trustworthy metering.

I suspect most people are in this middle ground, but no one represents us. I
don't want Uber to the arbiter what goes forward, and I don't want the taxi
lobby either. Both scenarios are distinctly dystopian.

~~~
kyrra
The issue most cities and states are running into is that the laws that
protect the current cab industry are making it near impossible for more cabs
to be added. There are years long waiting lines for new licenses because they
give out so few. And in those cities there are long waits to get a cab.

Uber and Lyft are able to get traction because the government is being too
slow to meet the demands people have within their cities/states. Regulation is
good for consumer protection, but when it's preventing services to reach
consumers, there is a problem. These companies are willing to go around the
laws cause the government is not doing their job.

~~~
potatolicious
Agreed. The success of Uber and Lyft is a testament to broken regulations. The
natural response in tech circles is to suggest that we hand the keys to Uber
and let them drive regulation.

But Uber isn't exactly a beacon of fair business practices, and in all
appearances seem anti-regulation overall, even the ones that are pro-consumer.

This is a bad position with no easy way out. Clearly the current regulations
aren't working, but the only two players in the game support either near-total
deregulation, or complete stagnancy. There is no actively engaged party that
represents the "we should probably regulate less but not throw out the baby
with the bathwater" side.

The government will respond to whoever exerts the most pressure (whether
that's a vindication of democracy or an example of its failure is another
discussion) - but the only two parties exerting pressure are both fairly evil
in my books.

~~~
waps
The problem of course is that everyone in the chain benefits, except the
customer.

1) Government gets free (non-taxing) income from the cab drivers.

2) Government officials have to deal with a voting bloc (and potential
strikes) if they don't comply.

3) Cab drivers get to limit supply, and all the advantages that brings, like
for example not paying 2%-5% of the fare to the card companies, plus paying
$1000 a month to the banks for having a payment terminal at all (not, of
course, including the separate cell subscription the payment terminal needs)
(yes I know the situation in America is slightly better, but ...)

4) Let's face facts here, regular people don't, or very rarely, use cabs
because of the price of that service. So they don't have an incentive to go
against this.

5) There is some limited value to the regulations : they are probably
overkill, but they do keep out bad drivers. Bad as in criminals, and bad as in
drunk and so on.

Bottom line : this is a problem with the democratic system itself, and
specifically a point where it doesn't agree with what the tech scene wants.
Tesla has effectively the same problem.

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zibit
Let me give all the non Virginians a quick glimpse into how unfair this is. DC
has a thing called slug lines. Traffic is so bad here that drivers will offer
_strangers a ride_ so they can get on the HOV lanes. Lots of people do this.
There are lines all over DC _and Virginia_ of people doing this.

Does the Virginia DMV say anything about slug lines and how unsafe they may
be? Or how the drivers may or may not have training? Or how the cars may not
have been properly inspected?

NO, in fact they encourage it (see below)

Why? cause it doesn't disrupt the powers that be

They actually link to slug lines - again a popular practice of allowing
strangers into the car of another stranger - on this page:

[http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/hov-
rulesfaq.asp](http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/hov-rulesfaq.asp)

~~~
JPKab
See my comment in this thread about me Ubering to DCA on Friday, and now when
I get back in tomorrow I won't have it.

But just want to point out: Because nobody is being paid in slug lines, they
couldn't tell people not to do it even if they wanted to.

You make an excellent point about how they claim to care about safety and then
tell people to go use slug lines.

For a good laugh, go look at the slug line horror stories. My favorite is a
guy who got in a car with a woman who was pulled over minutes later with a
suspended license and warrants. She was carted off to jail, and the police
officers gave him a ride to a strip mall where he had to call a taxi.

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hashtags
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- When you
see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who
produce nothing- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in
goods, but in favors- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull
than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them
against you- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a
self-sacrifice- you may know that your society is doomed.

-Francisco D'Anconia

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Xorlev
Can't compete? Lobby.

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logn
I don't get people's sentiment. We should either follow laws or change them.
Simply deciding we don't enforce certain laws or reinterpreting according to
various interests leads to worse situations. If Uber and Lyft want to break
the law, ok, but how can you blame the DMV for enforcing it?

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trhway
>"As many of the current regulations surrounding taxis and limos were created
before anything like Lyft's peer-to-peer model was ever imagined

it wasn't that the peer-to-peer model wasn't imagined, it just that the "peer-
to-peer" transportation services have been illegal pretty much everywhere.
What was changed by Lyft and the likes is the number of "law-breakers", i.e.
it seems it reached critical threshold for [considering] regulations change.
Laws/regulations is just a written record of the power balance, and as the
balance has just somewhat shifted it thus prompted the changes in the written
record of it.

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pdq
It's pretty ridiculous that car-pooling (aka ride-sharing) is fully legal and
unrestricted.

However, the second you charge money for the same service, the regulators want
to get involved to check for safety, inspections, and licensing.

~~~
calbear81
Yes, a commercial relationship changes the nature of that transaction since
commercial transactions are regulated/taxed in many states.

~~~
pdq
You're missing the point. If the grounds are that ethically paying customers
should have taxis licensed, why do those ethics not apply also to donated
services, like car-pooling?

~~~
ertdfgcb
Because if there is money involved there is incentive to do it for a living,
which leads to incentive to cut costs and that might not always be done in a
consumer-friendly way; therefore regulation is needed. If there is no money
involved, the people who would cut costs and make it unsafe for the consumer
are rarer -- since they can't do it for a living, and the relationship is
harder to regulate since the only thing involved is communication between two
parties, so it's probably not worth it.

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lectrick
The biggest startup challenge seems to be to deal with existing laws (and
people, and relationships) that never imagined your brand new idea. The
technological challenge seems secondary.

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Haul4ss
Rent seeking, baby! Gotta protect the entrenched interests.

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ortuna
These "licensed" services get out of hand where allowed number of licenses are
far lower than demand. This turns into a huge mess as a recent but less
publicized account shows: [http://www.fbi.gov/washingtondc/press-
releases/2013/former-g...](http://www.fbi.gov/washingtondc/press-
releases/2013/former-general-manager-sentenced-in-taxi-bribery-scheme)

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zibit
Folks at Uber, how best should I protest this?

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ddp
Should we shave off a Billion now?

