
Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe - phibs
http://online.wsj.com/articles/taxi-drivers-plan-big-protests-against-uber-technologies-across-europe-1402432899
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basicallydan
I'd like to highlight this part of the article:

> _In several of the protests, drivers aren 't specifically targeting Uber and
> other service providers, but what they say is outmoded regulation that makes
> it hard for them to compete. Part of Uber's challenge in Europe is the
> variety of regulations governing the continent, even among the 28-member
> European Union, each of which has different unions and different rules._

It's easy to dismiss off the protestors as old hat for not reacting gracefully
to a changing market, but the issue at least in London seems to largely be
with the fact that their existing businesses are subject to more costs and
regulations than the kinds that Uber and other services are facing.

So let's spare a thought for the taxi drivers who've spent years building up
their skills and knowledge of the local area, especially in places like London
[1], and hope that they can be given the opportunity to compete with Uber.
After all, if it weren't for the existing Taxi industry it's possible
companies like Uber wouldn't even exist.

There should be space in the market for both the traditional offering and the
fancy new one, and I hope that they can learn from each other and improve as a
result of the competition, rather than die out.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying Uber should be forced to play by the rules.
I'm saying that it might be time for the rules to be re-assessed based on
developments in the industry.

[1]: In London, our famous black cabs are driven only by cabbies who've spent
months learning London like the back of their hands in order to give their
customers the fastest (and most interesting, in many cases) journey possible.
See The Knowledge:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#The_Knowledge)

~~~
rikf
As a London native for almost 10 years I cant tell you how many times I have
been ripped off by black cab drivers taking longer routes then they could
have. I also cant tell you how difficult it can be at certain times to find a
taxi to take you home so people inevitably end up using unlicensed "mini cabs"
to get home. This all because the licensing regulations are stuck in the stone
age. Hopefully Uber will drag London kicking and screaming into the 21st
century.

As a side note I also dont think there is anything stopping a London black cab
driver from signing up for Uber.

~~~
basicallydan
No, I don't think so either. But that doesn't mean they should. Firstly, they
might like driving their black cab a lot more than Uber's cars. I'm a big, big
fan of the hackney carriage for the way it's designed specifically for
carrying 5 passengers in this context.

Perhaps it would be nice to see Uber using hackney carriages, I dunno. At any
rate, I agree that Uber should be a force for good here in improving the
licensing regulations.

Personally I've always had good experiences with black cab drivers, and many
times they've given me a discount. But I've also found the same thing with
Uber drivers.

------
timr
I'm not sure I believe as strongly in the idea in places like London, where
the official cab service is both highly regulated, and quite good.

In the US, the regulations for cabs tend to do little but drive up medallion
prices. Uber cars are a much-needed disruption in terms of availability and
quality, but you still can't really say that the drivers know much of anything
about the city. If we had the equivalent of a London cab here in SF, I'd
always choose that over Uber, yet I think you can probably undercut the price
of an official taxi in London simply by ignoring the rules. That seems wrong.

If unregulated competition kills a _good_ taxi service, that seems like a
drastically different outcome than what's happening here in the states.

------
jontro
I just do not see why uber can be disruptive AND follow the rules. Here in
Sweden they are lobbying to get exception from the rules, i.e. not having a
meter and not having price comparisons on the cars.

It's not hard to be disruptive if you break the rules

~~~
cromwellian
But why require every car to have this bulky fixed function meter device when
a smartphone app can do the job just as well?

Sometimes the rules themselves need to be disrupted.

~~~
Xylakant
> But why require every car to have this bulky fixed function meter device
> when a smartphone app can do the job just as well?

Can it? How can us be certain that the smartphone is actually the one that was
in the car when the rate was approved? How does "fixed rate advertised on the
outside of the car" match up with ubers surge pricing? Why does a rule that
the majority of the population evidently feels comfortable with need to be
disrupted?

I don't think disruption is necessarily a good thing. It can be, but it also
can bring a ton of negative results.

------
atmosx
Sad to see the taxi drivers. What they don’t understand is that soon they will
be obsolete. As many other groups. IT startups are extremely disruptive and
changes like these are hard to stop. With Google driverless cars around, it’s
safe to say that in 30 years no one will need a driver. Uber and competitors
could just buy driverless, extra-comfortable cars and get over with.

The problem is, what do you do with thousands of people working today as
cabbies? Or you don’t give a shit about a large % of the population not having
an income (and thus not being a consumer).

~~~
vdaniuk
Who is that "you" that is supposedly don't give a shit?

What's even more important, the tech disruption is coming to the vast range of
industries and many jobs will be obsolete much sooner than most expect.

~~~
atmosx
Sorry, might have made it clear. By 'you' I was referring to governments. What
do you do as a government.

~~~
vdaniuk
Cab drivers is just one small segment. That is a very good point to consider
and even we, as a collective hivemind, on the HN don't pay enough attention to
the problem of extreme rate at which jobs will diminish in the future. Start-
ups won't solve that.

If we don't find a scalable, sustainable, viral business model to disrupt
capitalism and focus on positive externalities humanity may be heading for a
disaster and this one won't be a surprise.

------
bowlofpetunias
It's interesting how the tech start-up community suffers from the same
inability to shift perspective that Microsoft had when it became a powerful
megacorp but still saw itself as the underdog.

Uber is not the plucky little start-up going up against big, slow incumbent
corporations, like many tech start-ups did in the past.

Uber is the heavily funded 800-pound gorilla going after the livelihoods of
the little guy.

So yes, some taxi-markets could do with changes, but the heavy handed and
callous approach of greed-driven "disruption" is totally out of place here.
We're talking ordinary hard working cab drivers, not fat cats in the boardroom
of MegaCorp.

If anybody wonders where the growing hate against the tech community comes
from, they may want to start looking in the mirror.

There's a difference between arguing that innovative disruption may
temporarily cause some pain and openly pissing on those who find themselves on
the wrong side of that change. There is way too much of the latter going on
here.

~~~
collyw
I guess you haven't had the misfortune of being ripped of by London taxi
drivers.

------
s_dev
Taxi's in Dublin have been a problem for a long time especially for people
with up the socioeconomic ladder. The quality of the vehicles can vary as well
as the manner of the driver. Regulation states the vehicles have to be clean
but the driver is welcome to wear whatever they like and they often wear
tracksuits and often espouse racist views (especially against Nigerian taxi
drivers) which undermines the perceived professionalism of the industry here.

Uber has really taken off here in part because the taxi industry wasn't
catering to this need. I do believe Uber is following the rules because they
aren't a taxi service. They can't pick up people who flag them down off the
street. They really are just a very sophisticated private car service and
shouldn't fall under taxi regulation. Since the credit card details are held
by Uber it also ensures the passengers behave themselves unlike in normal
taxis where drunk or rowdy people vomit or make a mess in the car putting the
driver off the road for the night making the entire taxi service somewhat
inefficient.

------
avz
It boils down to the simple question:

Would you rather live in a world where the service, its quality, reliability,
cost and professionalism is that of the current taxi services or the newcomers
like Uber?

I have personally been ripped off, deceived about the route and pricing and
forced to put up with rude drivers and operators so many times and in so many
places that I cheer any competition, be it public transport or car sharing.

------
_pmf_
Why should we be excited for some US company siphoning off money from people
who are already at the lower end of the wage scale?

------
jsudhams
Not sure about the UK cabs way of work. But what stops them being a UBER cab
driver as well? Isn't it a additional channel? Like in radio taxi can't they
simple make themselves busy when they get UBER call so that the cab company
does not assign them any additional pickup/drop?

~~~
dagw
At least in Sweden, to be a cab you have to clearly mark your car as a taxi,
clearly post your rates in the window and have a verified taxi meter in your
car to make sure you actually charge the posted rates, and Uber doesn't want
to do any of those things.

------
ddebernardy
Is this the first EU-wide strike, or has there been any such things in the
past?

~~~
phibs
EU-wide it is indeed the first one, but as far as I know there have already
been quite a lot regional ones.

------
arb99
More people have heard about Uber thanks to these strikes than they ever would
have (for the time being anyway...)

------
mantrax5
Taxi drivers in Europe are paid a fraction of the profits they get from
clients, most of it goes to taxes and the operators running the cab networks.

Uber's drivers are in a similar position.

So what do we have here? Another example of pitting poor against poor, for the
interests of one group of rich against another, emerging, group of rich.

I almost admire the skillful orchestration at play here, although probably I
shouldn't.

~~~
vixin
[http://www1.salary.com/CT/New-London/Taxi-Driver-
salary.html](http://www1.salary.com/CT/New-London/Taxi-Driver-salary.html)

Not exactly poor but paid like many other jobs in London which probably don't
come with tips. Trouble is that the internet has just about surplanted 'The
knowledge' and made it available to all.

~~~
chc
That appears to be a place in Connecticut, not the London under discussion
here.

