"Lets Just Drive" (lets-just-drive)
03/16/2016 at 18:24 • Filed to: None
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"Lets Just Drive" (lets-just-drive)
03/16/2016 at 18:24 • Filed to: None | 2
| 6 |
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
A comment was made, by yours truly, in response to a recent article about the attempted robbery of a taxi driver in which I expressed regret that Uber had failed to be an instrument of change. It was a single, unsupported statement and naturally drew questions; how, I was asked, had Uber failed? It’s not something I can answer in brief or glibly.
Allow me to start by making it perfectly clear that while I do not endorse the behavior of Uber, this isn’t about slamming Uber drivers. If one can ‘support the troops’ while also criticizing the behavior of the government directing those troops, I can support Uber drivers without supporting their corporate overlords or their frankly reprehensible behavior. Uber drivers have a lot in common with cab drivers yet, in the same way the very rich enjoy watching everyone else bicker about a $15 minimum wage, busy themselves with battling the Taxi industry on the roads and in court. At the very top, Uber ain’t care.
But...
Uber was born of opportunity and that opportunity was afforded Uber by a taxi industry which hadn’t changed fundamentally in two or three decades. Cab companies, I can tell you this as I was on the inside in the early 2000's, saw the writing on the wall and opted to put up wallpaper. Broken apps, shitty email service - these were their answer to the growing social age. Poor customer service bred of a “who else are you gonna use” attitude combined with high prices to ride in crappy cars and the people were getting fed up. In reply, Uber was created and at first the cab-stablishment ignored them, added more wall paper and a hanging painting. Then, suddenly, Uber wasn’t messing around, suddenly the cab companies realized they’d been out maneuvered.
Faced with a changing paradigm, the companies struggled to react. How did they react, you ask? With smartphone app’s and better customer service? NO! Their method for blocking Uber from competing wasn’t to grow and adapt, it was to employ the tool of bureaucracy as their weapon. On the grounds of established requirements for operating a taxi (permits, insurance, criminal record checks, etc) many cab companies sought to prevent Uber from even getting a foot in the door. This would be utterly disgraceful if they weren’t battling an organization prepared to employ similar tactics. And so, in their battles in markets across North America, Uber and the Taxi Industry revealed themselves as interested not in improving the experience but in exploiting an already troubled transportation format for every single penny (USD or CDN) possible.
Thus; Uber failed to meaningfully change the business for the better.
But wait, you say, what about my personal feelings as an Uber rider or operator? Isn’t Uber... better?
No. It’s not. In some ways, Taxi Cabs are a thousand times better and it’s largely regional.
Taxis, for example, equip interior cameras and microphones for your protection as well as the drivers. They are required to have higher level licences often and matching insurance. Taxis are regulated, even if poorly, and that regulation pays dividends for the customer and the operator.
While Uber is slowly adapting some of these measures in some of the cities in which they operate, the change is of such a gradual pace as to be transparent - Uber is adapting these measures only as it is forced to. Meanwhile, the ever unchanging taxi industry continues to battle Uber on legal grounds and not fiscal.
Uber could have been the instrument of change, the tool by which both industries change for the better whether that means the dissolving of one or the success of another. But it’s not.
The taxi industry sucks, don’t get me wrong, on all levels. Employed to answer phones, dispatch or drive, an owner or a lease operator, as a customer or just sharing the roads with cabs - it sucks but, if anything, Uber proves it doesn’t need to suck... in theory if not in practice.
And the moment Uber is allowed to operate in my city, I’ll be behind the wheel of my pony giving rides and getting tickets because fuck it, who cares about anything or anyone else as long as I’m getting good, right?
Think I’ll go rob me a cabbie.
Brian, The Life of
> Lets Just Drive
03/16/2016 at 19:25 |
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And then, on top of everything else, Ford went and killed the Panther which robbed the Taxistas of their heretofore never-ending supply of used Police beaters which which to Earl Scheib-ify and supplement their creaky fleets. The horror!
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Lets Just Drive
> Brian, The Life of
03/16/2016 at 19:32 |
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Fuck you Brian. Here, I write this thing with words, the best words, and you come along and two-sentence two-step around me like some sort of two-stepping two-stepper?
DIE BRIAN! DIE!
jimz
> Lets Just Drive
03/16/2016 at 19:41 |
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The Panther triplets were like the Windows XP of cars. Everyone derided them when they were on the market, but the instant they went away they became some sort of treasured gem.
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Lets Just Drive
> jimz
03/16/2016 at 19:49 |
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This.
Cabbies hated them because they were the ubiquitous choice of cab alongside the Caprice Classics and that was all you got. And then along came the Prius’ and every driver who drove not only to make a buck but to drive was pining for the old Ex-Interceptor package Panthers like a teenager pines for another teenager, of same or different sex.
The Fords got called “Cop cabs” and the Chevy’s became “Bubble cabs.”
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Brian, The Life of
> Lets Just Drive
03/16/2016 at 20:38 |
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I think you should build a wall around me and make me pay for it.
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Lets Just Drive
> Brian, The Life of
03/16/2016 at 20:47 |
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The great wall of Brian, to keep Brian’s from stealing our jokes.