Just to clarify, they're banned from offering Uber service until they register as a Taxi service.
>There are also cases in which legal loopholes have allowed the company to continue its operations. For example, Uber plans to purchase commercial licenses for its drivers in Germany, where ride-sharing services are banned from operating without taxi licenses.
It's similar in the country I'm currently in - Uber works as a Taxi service and Uber drivers have Taxi licenses. Altho I would not call this a "loophole" as this is the route Uber should have taken from the get go in those places where they don't allow those without Taxi licenses to operate Taxi services.
The irony is that Uber is somehow showing that you don't need taxi licenses to run a responsible taxi service from the point of view of the drivers. It's totally doable to run an effective and safe service without requiring taxi licenses.
The problem is their morals when it comes to how they treat their drivers.
Not in Denmark although a small country. In fact most European countries will have them insure themselves to the extend it's needed to be self employed to begin with.
Also the US insurance (and legal) system is a very unique one which other countries don't actually have. So not sure what you are worried about from that perspective.
In the US Uber provides insurance for all their drivers. Outside the US the drivers have to buy their own insurance.
In, for example, England the insurance is part of the regulatory burden. I know that a taxi in England has valid insurance. I don't know if an English Uber car has valid insurance.
Uber avoids the regulation, and under-insured cars is one risk of that.
> What difference could it make to you?
The car crashes and you lose a hand. This puts you out of work for a few months; makes it much harder for you to get new jobs; reduces your productivity. You'll need some modifications to your home. You'll need money. A properly insured car makes it easier to get that money.
In England, Uber is licensed as a minicab firm (taxicabs you can hire on the street, minicabs you must order through an operator, and the Uber app acts as the operator). Uber play completely fair with the regulation here (maybe the regulation was never as onerous as in the states). You can generally see on the side of the vehicle that it has the licensing from the appropriate council. The council won't license a minicab that doesn't have insurance.
That means Uber in England at least is obeying local laws. In other countries Uber is not registering and licensing as the local equivalent of minicab, that's why they are getting banned.
I think Uber should want to obey laws in the territories that it is trying to operate in. To not do so is just picking the wrong kind of fight.
Even with public health care you're going to need money.
England has public health care, but you're going to want a better prosthetic and you're going to want money to make adaptations to your home over what will be available. And you're going to want money to cover your reduced income while you're off work.
So liability insurance - isn't that generally required by law in European countries? I know it's illegal to own a car w/o such insurance in Denmark, for instance.
Yes, everyone has personal insurance that covers your car for personal use. You can't register a car without that in all places I know of.
The issue is they also must have insurance that covers them for business use when they are using their car for business. Every personal insurance policy I've read says it isn't in effect when the car is being used for business purposes. If I tried to file a claim under my personal automobile policy it would go something like this
"...and you were driving for Uber at the time? Yeah...lol."
In 'Europe' also there are many damages you will be left hanging with if whoever caused your damage is not insured. If you think you're golden when something happens to you because you live in Europe, you're in for a rude awakening in case something would happen. There are many personal injury lawyers across Europe. They just don't make as much money because of no punititve damages.
(Example off the cuff, was on tv a while ago: girl gets ankle damaged in accident at car show. Yes the foot gets the plaster 'for free', but here are some other costs that aren't covered by national insurance: travel costs, time off for parents, adaptation to the house to accommodate reduced mobility, wheelchair-accessible car, ...) Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I know of no social healthcare system that covers such costs).
I'm not sure why you keep mentioning the US, I'm not talking about the US.
The only reason I mention the US is because Uber takes care of the insurance for Uber drivers in the US, but they don't do that anywhere else. Everywhere else the drivers are expected to buy the insurance. In some places you know that Uber are regulated as part of the taxi system and so you know the drivers will have bought insurance as part of that regulation. But that's not everywhere.
Properly insured cars are really important, even when you live in an area with public health care and welfare systems. There are many costs involved in severe injury that are only minimally covered by public welfare.
This is not a super rare event! About 1,700 people die each year in road traffic accidents in Great Britain. (And that's the lowest it's been since records began). Very many more are severely injured.
In England you'll get minimal help from public welfare systems - you'll get a prosthetic limb but you'll want a better one, and that will cost. You'll want to make adaptations to your home - you'll get some help, but you'll want more and better adaptations. Depending how you're employed you'll get some statutory sick pay or disability benefit, but these are likely to be much less than you were earning. (Statutory sick pay is £88.25 per week for 28 weeks.)
My original point was that Uber because of it's use of technology have solved the problems that would normally require licenses. I.e. it's as safe to drive as any other service.
Insurance is a minor problem which 1) can easily be fixed, 2) isn't really a problem with the uber model.
Yes, sure, the medical bills will be paid to an extent. But what about you losing your income? Making your home fit for being disabled? Rehabilitation? (Public system pays only the bare minimum here).
Well, in my country at least (NZ), everyone automatically has insurance to cover all of that for accidents. It's called ACC. In exchange for that, we have a "no-fault" system so you can't sue someone for an accident making the concept of liability insurance for accidents something that doesn't exist here.
That's nice for people getting injured. Insurance then becomes something you get to protect yourself, not because you're required to have it to protect other people. If you crash into an expensive car, you're still on the hook for the cost of that unless you have your own insurance. But that's a decision you can make yourself if you're worried about the risk of causing expensive damage - no need to worry about whether every car you go near is insured.
Does public healthcare help you if you need to install a wheelchair ramp in your home? Or other lifestyle modifications that are a result of injury? Such as increased costs of transportation? Lost wages?
As parent said, the USA market is unique. How do you know your taxi has suitable insurance! Or insurance at all? Insurance laws in China are completely different from the US (everyone is seriously under insured, even the normal taxis).
I have no idea about England. Not everyone lives in England, some of us even live in Asia. My point is that Uber should follow the laws of the countries they are in, and if those laws are holy (in the sense that adequate insurance is not enforced or not apparent), then that is a problem with the laws, not Uber's business model.
How would I know the driver has an insurance which covers driving people for profit? The usual insurances do not. If something would going to happen to a passenger they do not know whether that is covered.
Well that seems to be a problem with legislation not the uber model per se. Just don't see the problem but then again I don't live in the UK so I don't hear about all those examples of that happening.
The legislation is already there: If you drive around you need insurance. That is a sensible policy. Uber saves cost because neither they nor their drivers are appropriately insured. It's only a matter of time until something bad happens.
It's not a problem of legislation but a problem with Uber.
I don't see the issue. Most european countries have insurance either via the wellfare state or through legislation or insurances. What do the passenger care about drivers insurance for? If anything Uber is not going to leave just an inch of potential room for critique so of course they are insured as you need to be just in order to own a car.
In England all car drivers need insurance. But car drivers who carry passengers need extra insurance.
In the US Uber buys this extra insurance for all their drivers. Outside the US Uber does not buy this extra insurance. It tells drivers that they have to buy their own extra insurance. Remember, this is extra insurance on top of the regular insurance that all car drivers must have.
In some countries Uber drivers are regulated just as normal minicabs, and the regulators will check that the uber driver has this extra insurance. But in some other countries Uber is aggressively resisting that regulation, and there are concerns that the cars are not properly insured.
Imagine if you lost an arm tomorrow, or had a brain injury. You may get all your hospital treatment for free. You may get all the prosthetic limbs for free. You might get some paid leave from work. But even so, you are going to be left with large costs. Those costs are covered by insurance. But if you were a paying passenger in a car, and the car driver did not have the extra insurance, you would not be covered by their insurance. You would not get the money you need. You could try to sue the driver, but if the driver is poor you're unlikely to get the money.
Perhaps it would be prudent to have disability insurance on yourself and not worry about the driver's insurance. How do you know that drunk driver that hits you while your crossing the street has insurance? How does anyone know anything? Insure yourself, the it makes no difference what other people are doing. It's called personal responsibility. Definitely a foreign concept in Europe, but not completely extinct.
Think about this.. In a normal taxi, how do you know the driver has insurance? Perhaps it has expired. It's no different than any other kind of business. Relying upon someone else to be insured is just foolish.
I love that you think personal responsibility means me having to pay in case somebody else hits me with a car. Rather than them being personally responsible for their driving into me.
Regardless, the way insurers generally work is that they will try to recover the cost of damage for the responsible party. So, for example, if you have homeowner's insurance and somebody drives into your house, your insurer will pay you and then try to recover the costs from the the driver's insurance company.
You know most cars/business have insurance because the state checks that. Sure there may be some who get by for a little while but the system is very effective for the most part!
There is a difference between a regular car insurance (which indeed everybody is required to have) and a commercial car insurance. The former excludes damages while transporting passengers for profit which is fine according to law and will not pay if an Uber driver has an accident.
I do not need to fear that nobody is going to pay my healthcare after an accident. However, that is paid by the public at large instead of the one responsible (so Uber shifts liability away from them to society). Additionally, nobody is going to reimburse my other damages, such as loss of earnings if the driver can't pay.
Insure yourself. Why would you not have disability insurance or protection against lost wages? That's foolish. What if you fell down the stairs? Are you going to shift that burden onto society because you failed to insure yourself?
That's not the point. Of course I can insure myself. But the price of my insurance and everybody else's is calculated with the knowledge that in case of a traffic accident they don't need to pay. As traffic accidents are the most common this significantly reduces the premiums. If more and more drivers are not appropriately insured they need to recalculate that.
This is shifting the burden to society, in the name of unnecessary high premiums for those who insured themselves.
You will have same issue when driving with a friend of your no. Or are you saying they aren't covered in the UK then? That seems to be easily fixable.
Again sure you can blow it up to be a big problem but it's easily fixable and doesn't in itself take anything away from the original point which started this weird insurance thread.
There's a big difference between your buddy paying you $20 to take him to the airport couple times a year and regularly giving strangers rides where you expect to make a profit.
Even if you picked up a hitchhiker and they gave you $20 for your troubles that hitchhiker is not your customer and you don't regularly drive around looking for hitchhikers to make a profit.
It's actually pretty straightforward. That's why the term "sharing economy" is so disingenuous; nothing but doublespeak.
In the US you need something called Ride Share Insurance.
I couldn't find a price quote, but I imagine it's not cheap.
Your current policy holder is not required to offer this special insurance. They can cancel you if they feel you are driving for Uber without telling them.
No beefs with Uber, other than stop fooling with vechicle requirements, and fees. You're hiring independent contractors?
Oh yea, whatever you do don't go into debt over Uber. Buying a new Prius to work for this company seems rediculious.
No they can't. In Germany Taxus have a lot of regulation. Among other things: Fixed prices approved by city councils (I.e. no extra charges in times of high demand), "Beförderungspflicht" (the driver can't easily deny a trip, even when goinh just round the corner), taxi operators have to ensure providing "enough" round the clock service and a few such more things Reason is to ensure taxis are a reliable part of pulic transit systems.
You can make the "Personenbeförderugsschein" which allows to do "shuttle services" but compared to taxis they can't randomly pick up passengers but I.e. have to return to their base before picking up the next passenger, no waiting at a "strategically" good position etc.
I never claimed they could operate as Taxi, but in the way they planned to operated.
And a Personenbeförderungsschein is the only thing you need for that.
In some cities even the only differences between a hired service like Uber or a Taxi is that Uber may NOT use Taxi-only spaces, and may only pick up people who have arranged the journey before pickup.
Also, to say, if the city allowed chauffeurs before Uber arrived, and decides that Uber should be regulated as a taxi, they must force those existing businesses to register as well, or create special onerous laws to make a distinction.
Firstly, the drivers should get a license to drive people around for profit (Personenbeförderungsschein). Every chauffeur has that.
Secondly, under current regulations unless you are a taxi you need to return to a designated premise after every trip. Every chauffeur needs to do that as well.
There is already a meaningful distinction in the law. The second restriction might be a bit harsh, but often Uber isn't even abiding by the first which is a pretty basic requirement.
Well, the second regulation would definitely disallow things like Uber. The first regulation is quite reasonable, but I don't see why it is Uber's responsibility to ensure compliance when all of its drivers are independent contractors. At some point, if people lie about their insurance status, they should be found out and punished.
WTF is a "responsible taxi service" ? Is the bar to being 'responsible' getting some government license ?
Exposing itself to "license" means exposing themselves to arbitrary government control and has nothing to do with being responsible. On the contrary focusing on making good profits is the best way to help both drivers and passengers without compromising interests of both.
Because the government license insures the taxi has insurance, the driver is trained, every part of the taxi is separately checked every year, the taxi is clean, the driver can't overcharge, the profits from the taxi driver stay in the region and are not transferred to New York.
>The problem is their morals when it comes to how they treat their drivers.
I'll bite. What's immoral about how they treat their drivers? Their drivers choose their hours, choose which rides to take, and can work for as many uber-like services at the same time as they want.
You hire people as self-employed but rip them of the opportunity to work as self-employed by.
1) Not allowing them to set their own fees
2) Not allowing them to hire people to drive for them
3) Discouraging tips
4) Deciding what types of cars they can drive in.
All things you would normally do to people who where hired because they would trade that potential upside of being selv-employed by for instance having access to ex. healthcare and vacation.
In other words. Uber takes away all the good things about being self-employed and replace them with restrictions that would normally only apply for someone who was employed. While at the same time not giving them access to those things that are actually advantageous about being employed.
Uber isn't a technology disrupter it's a legislation disrupter.
To be fair, taxi drivers are also self employed, usually don't get health insurance or vacation either. Uber isn't "changing that game" in the private car-for-hire business.
But they can hire people to work for themselves and build a business around that. Uber drivers can't. This is one of the core principles of being able to run an actual company. the ability to delegate work out to others.
That doesn't seem to address the parent's point that no one is forcing them to take the job, and they find it to be better than their other options. How, then, would banning them help?
Is Uber responsible for the generally poor opportunities in the economy? Does their offering of these positions disrupt a solution to some public goods problem? (A good heuristic for whether one should care about a kind of lawbreaking, btw.)
That doesn't seem to address the parent's point that no one is forcing them to take the job,
No one forces self-employed independent contractor tradesmen to become self-employed independent contractor tradesmen, and yet when one comes to your house to fix your plumbing or electrical work-there are still requisites under the law that they're entitled to.
The criticism makes no sense...just because one isn't "forced" to work doesn't mean protections from employer abuse or misconduct suddenly don't matter if someone decides to take the work.
But this isn't some random abuse with "take it or leave it". It's something they knew about all along and went into with open eyes. What doesn't make sense is this dogmatic insistence that no right should be waivable under any circumstance. In what sense is it actually misconduct. As I said initially (and which I didn't see a response to), if you legitimately believe a case of lawbreaking is harmful and the kind of thing we should care about, that should translate into "here is a public goods problem whose solution that disrupts". So how does this lawbreaking do that? And why not just spell that out the first time around?
The opposite position is like saying, "you are the rightful owner of that apple, therefore you can't trade it for something better even if you want to, because that would be abusive of your rights".
I have already explained the issue. Uber takes the best of having them self-employed and give them all the worst things about being employed as working conditions.
The Uber driver have absolutely no way of building a business or expanding it. No way of making more money. No way of hiring people. No control over which car to use and so on.
This is not the conditions someone who is self-employed work under.
And that's still not responding to the criticism: even with those downsides, it's better than all the government-endorsed options. Whose fault is that, and what does arresting them accomplish with respect to their welfare? (Which I believe was your motivation for objecting to the practice.)
Edit: I'm not trying to be snarky; it's just that this issue comes up a lot, and I always look for such an explanation and yet never get it. Hence why someone came up with the "Copenhagen interpretation of ethics" argument. If you could actually fill this gap in my understanding, I would gladly help spread the insight to those like me who don't see consistent internal logic behind it.
So I just want to make sure I understand the criticism, as I feel we may have inadvertently drifted here:
Someone who knows the risks (physical, emotional, mental what have you and furthermore etcetera) of a job shouldn't be afforded certain protections from the government to minimize those risks, if they take a job that opens them up to the possibility of said risks?
They should be afforded those protections, but they should be waivable by informed parties (barring some dynamic that would explain why this is a bad idea and which no one in the thread has articulated). Is there a reason to believe the drivers aren't informed of such tradeoffs or did not become informed very soon?
>The Uber driver have absolutely no way of building a business or expanding it. No way of making more money. No way of hiring people. No control over which car to use and so on.
They have strictly as much or more opportunity to do all of these things than if Uber didn't exist. Driving for Uber doesn't stop you from doing other drive-for-hire work. And because Uber exists, they can at least make some money when they aren't getting any customers of their own.
I refuse to buy the premise of "no one is forcing them"
will strictly true it's also completely ignoring the reality that we people have needs that forces us to make choices, often choices we don't want to make but have few other choices.
It does address the parents point because if you don't see that I am not sure anything I say will change that.
You don't understand the logic of "this is a better option than all others and removing it doesn't help unless that's part of some [effective] collective action strategy to a problem"? If so, that's a strike against your model of the problem, not in favor of your criticism.
If you could articulate the collective action problem that such a ban would resolve, that would improve my worldmodel to the point of seeing what insight you're offering here and possibly agreeing. If you can't, then maybe your position doesn't correspond to a better worldmodel than one that I and the original parent hold.
Also, it's not so much that "no one" forces them to work, but that Uber doesn't. My need for satiation "forces" me to buy food, but I hope that doesn't, in your mind, justify a crackdown on all food sellers.
Tipping is a terrible societal habit, though. Pay them a living wage, fine. Just don't force people to waste time on a another, entirely separate payment.
There's been some legitimate concern over what Uber does with the customer data it collects. Spying on and blackmailing journalists and whatnot. Who knows what else. They don't exactly have a "do no evil" motto.
At least in the part of the States I'm familiar with (NYC), there is this whole business with taxi medallions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City which seems pretty dubious in the modern age. Registered taxis have to basically rent a medallion as it's too expensive to own one outright anymore (although that market has been all over the place). Uber drivers obviously don't.
I am from Brazil, and I am very happy for Uber going the illegal way, because the illegal way, is the actually moral way.
Here in Brazil we have the "Taxi Mafia", to become a licensed Taxi, you need to at least bribe people, if you get too involved in the Taxi system, you will end interacting with a real Mafia, of the sort that assassinate people, steal millions (or billions) of public money, and send people to sleep with fishes.
Uber is our ray of hope against the Mafia, and the Mafia is fighting back hard (physically assaulting Uber drivers and cars, and doing all sorts of manuevering to ban Uber explicitly to allow the police to arrest Uber drivers).
EDIT: Just something concrete.
There are many, many videos of this stuff, but I could not find the most interesting ones, youtube search is not cooperative today (I keep finding stuff related to some videogames instead)
This video is in portuguese, but is basically about the reporters tricking one guy into thinking they are real taxi driver pretenders, and the guy offers (illegally) to give them a legal taxi license for what was then about 50.000 USD.
when UBER was banned in São Paulo, I watched the discussion in the council, one councilwoman showed a video, also made by reporters, where the Mafia was charging 100.000 USD for a license + car + bribes paid
This is another video, unfortunately part of it is seemly missing...
Stuff in this video (2010): Rio de Janeiro city has only 32000 taxi licenses, but has 6 million inhabitants (plus all the people that go there to work, and tourists).
One guy offered in the newspaper classifieds, to sell his taxi for 70.000 USD, his car is worth 15.000 USD, to is quite obvious what the rest of the money is for.
There are competing Taxi mafias, in one part of the video, a group of taxi drivers from one mafia, beat up a driver from another mafia. (ie: the "foreign" driver stopped to deliver a passenger at the airport, and a person that was waiting approached him, triggering the attack, since he was "stealing" passengers from the competing group territory).
Nearer the end of the video, the reporters ask in front of a shopping mall, how to join their group, they state that one of their members want to leave and is selling his place, that the reporter can buy it, the reporter attempt to see if the money will go to the police, and asks if it will pay bribes, they reply that not in that case, that in the shopping mall the money was protection money, that those that are paying are under protection of a certain person, thus noone will mess with the paying people, those that don't pay risk getting their cabs attacked, ranging from their tires being popped to worse stuff.
There is no doubt that Uber is have great effect in some countries. The question become whether it's replacing one evil with another.
Keep in mind that Ubers goal is to not have any drivers at all which is why they are actively investing in the development and research of self-driving cars.
I'm wondering how driverless cars would be "evil".
Uber isn't hiding their own efforts on that front. Maybe they aren't blaring trumpets about it when they pay their human drivers, but we know where things are going.
You would be surprised how few people think about this.
Keep in mind Ubers success is the market it addresses (personal transportation) is huge and do not require any interest in technology to be either using or working for.
The driverless cars aren't evil but the fact that Uber is using some of those money they make on the current drivers to ultimately replace them I would claim is a form of "evil"
Especially given the circumstances they work under.
This is how it was when I was in Ireland. Actually not a bad compromise -- I had the meter to keep an eye on the total fare, and I paid with the app without worrying about currency.
>Altho I would not call this a "loophole" as this is the route Uber should have taken from the get go in those places where they don't allow those without Taxi licenses to operate Taxi services.
If Uber had done what you think they should have, then they would have never taken off. The difference between an cab and an uber is not yellow paint and a taxi light, or even a harder driving test. It's the absurd regulations around taxis that turned them into a government-sponsored cartel.
When I was in Taipei, the cab system was 100 times better than uber and had none of the problems of the cab system in the US. If uber's main value proposition is superiority to taxis, then it makes no sense for it to try to take over in a city where the taxis are perfectly fine.
Honestly, the same is true in NYC. I rarely call an uber because it's just easier to get one of the hundreds of yellow cabs than it is to stand on the street like an idiot looking for the Toyota Prius with the right license plate.
Since uber arrived, all the issues I had with cabs seem to have disappeared. The fares are lower, drivers accept credit cards, and don't talk on their cellphone to their buddy in India. Uber put the pressure on cabs and it worked. I see no need to use uber.
A counter-anecdote to your anecdote:
When I was in Taipei my friends and I tried to get a cab to Jiufen. The cab driver told us there was a special fixed rate for the trip and quoted us a number that seemed reasonable but was actually around a 50%-100% markup over the mileage/time-based price. So we called an Uber and saved about 50% vs what the cab quoted. The driver couldn't change the price and trick tourists.
I doubt the driver was trying to trick tourists. I've taken taxis to jiufen on a few occasions and drivers always typically want a fixed price that varies with each driver. This is with Taiwanese friends doing the negotiating.
I think it's somewhat understandable given it's a long way out of Taipei City and there's no guarantee of being able to find a return fare.
To me it sounds clear that uber has benefits there in that case, unlike the grandparent is claiming. Most consumers favour constant prices without surprises, and dislike negotiation processes.
I feel this is the issue with Uber, the price doesn't take into account the destination and probability of finding a return route customer. For example, I've talked with lyft drivers in Seattle who have picked up people in downtown who then say their destination is Tacoma or even Olympia (which can take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours depending on traffic). That's 1 to 2 hours away from anywhere the driver normally operates, and with very little chance of finding a fare for the return drive. It would be fair if the fare was adjusted to take into account these important variations.
and then there's the Italian Bistro (and Italian pricing to tourist in general, including taxis and cafes):
"The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for."
you're only seeing half the issue, i'm guessing that you only took a one way trip to jiufen? the driver's probably charging you for roundtrip because that's actually what he has to do, he'll have an empty cab on the trip back to taipei.
False. They have said their goal is to be competitive against public transportation and to keep dropping prices. Not engage in a monopoly and become fat cats like the taxi industry.
> Not engage in a monopoly and become fat cats like the taxi industry.
Given the anti competitive practices of Uber in the US, I wouldn't trust anything these guys say. "Start ups" always say that before becoming the monopoly.
Does Lyft not exist? Did yellow cabs not create an app for themselves in certain cities? What exactly is anti-competitive? They are literally dealing with an industry that is thug-entrenched.
Well, Uber did try to sabotage Lyft on multiple occasions [1]. The real story is a bit muddier, since Uber claims that Lyft also tried to sabotage them.
I agree. I lived in Taiwan for years and took thousands of cabs there. The existing service beats anything I've experienced from Uber in any country by a wide margin.
I can confirm the positive experience with cabs in Taipei. Taxi there is cheap anyway, and the taxi drivers I've experienced have been very friendly and professional.
A lot of them don't speak english though. I don't know if there are special english-speaking taxis you can call up like I've seen in other countries. Personally I've never needed it.
As a side note, do any native Mandarin speakers have a good understanding of why app is usually spelled and pronounced as if it were an acronym (A.P.P.) instead of an abbreviation? Have been wondering about this for months, and the Quora thread on it is a little unsatisfactory: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-Chinese-people-in-China-pr...
I'd say it's because to a Mandarin speaker A.P.P is easier to pronounce than 'app' (Mandarin doesn't have any syllables that end with a p sound, but it does have syllables that start with p).
There's also a history of 3 letter acronyms imported from English, such as DVD, VCD, MP3 which are all pronounced letter by letter and even though APP is not an acronym, to a native speaker it fits a similar pattern.
I'm a native mandarin speaker from Taiwan and now living in NY.
I think it just comes down to the fact that english is not everyone's first language there.
For your example, people end up pronounce A.P.P because not everyone knows that app comes from `application` and therefore you might run into conversations with people speaking with different pronunciations. Some people pronounce 'app' the normal way, and some people pronounce 'app' similar to (ape).
After awhile, people would explain what they're trying to say by spelling out, and eventually you'd learn to just say A.P.P instead of attempting to incorrectly pronounce the word.
Same thing goes with Facebook, which is referred as F.B, and Instagram, which is usually referred as I.G
It's because Mandarin has standard syllables. While the sound for "p" is in the language, it's normally bound into a syllable. So saying "app" with the "p" sound at the end is awkward, but "pi" is natural.
IIRC, Whatsapp is the first popular app of smartphone in Taiwan. In the beginning, A.P.P stand for Whatsapp in TV talk shows, just like F.B(Facebook) & I.G(Instagram) nowadays. Hence people trend to spell the word app as A.P.P.. As more and more apps came out, the word app became more general, but the spelling didn't change at all.
Funny, just recently I had to explain this to my Taiwanese friend. I didn't know what the heck he was talking about when he said his colleague was working on A.P.P. thought it was an agency or something.
I cannot completely tell from the app pictures on the site, but it would worth thinking about it how much English people need for delivery? E.g. Uber is in English here, and was using it pretty fine without much Chinese. It's less of an issue for me, have an "everyday" level of proficiency, but in general.
Also, do you have different apps for the different markets?
If it's the same app everywhere, then it would make sense that the people can bring the "service" with them e.g. going from Taiwan to HK on a business trip, or Singapore for a few months work stint (or any other direction), and they can still use it the same way.
It drives me crazy to no end when there's an international company, and language is completely tied to the location. Your case make a bit more sense than others, and it's a ton of work, I know. Just some thoughts.
> The Business Insider reports, some countries and regions have completely banned the service, finding it illegal under national or state laws. These places include Japan, Thailand, Nevada in the United States and Karnataka in India.
Not in Karnataka, India - I and everyone uses it everyday.
Can someone enlighten me about the history of the taxi industry? I have a medical background and I know that HIPAA came to be because insurance companies were taking advantage of patients with known conditions. There were other reasons, of course, but horror stories of patient's protected health information being sold to the media and insurance companies prompted the legislation.
I have a hard time understanding how regulating personal transit is a governmental matter. A taxi driver may overcharge me a significant amount, and then there are instances of physical confrontation, but these are both rare and a risk that is inherent in accepting a ride with another person. It seems to me that the benefit to society (less pollution, traffic, easier commute, automotive scrap waste, etc) outweighs these risks.
Road management is a Government matter - specifically, managing congestion, where vehicles are allowed to stop and when, etc. Add on top of that the not-uncommon story in many countries of a taxi driver charging an extortionate fare without notice. Add on top of that ensuring that taxi drivers actually do their jobs and get people where they're going, rather than refusing to take people to locations within the city that are "too far away". Add on top of that regulating taxis so that people with disabilities can actually get out and about, seeing as public transport is dire in the US.
All of these things are things that people had huge problems with convincing taxi companies to actually solve - after all, it's more profitable not to - and eventually local Governments agreed that taxis are as important to a city's transport infrastructure as anything else and should be held to a certain standard. You can only realistically argue against that if you believe that everyone who was using taxis had an alternative, which isn't the case.
Uber solves many of these issues, I must admit - but what about five years down the line, once they have the near-monopoly they're seeking? Can we be absolutely certain it will continue to do what's best for the cities it services, even when it affects Uber's bottom line?
They will probably not get anywhere near a monopoly. Their businessmodel is flawed: anyone can start a similar service. In fact, many similar services already exist in Europe.
Anecdotally, none of my co-workers use Lyft in Seattle because "There's always an Uber 2 minutes away."
The network lock-in is quite real - if you can't get a critical mass of cars on the road, you can't get customers, and you can't get a critical mass of cars on the road without having customers paying fares.
What can really hurt Uber is unionization of their drivers - since nothing stops them from collectively switching to a competing service.
The lock in can be countered by the price actually. In the east and south bay you get better availability of drivers in lyft because it's about .40-.30/mile more expensive than uber. Lyft also has lyft line in parts of the east bay, increasing some demand there.
One could have said the same thing about Taxi Companies 10 years ago. They have all the drivers & yellow cars locked in! However Uber came in and disrupted. If things rot, disruption will follow. I hardly doubt we need to worry about Uber becoming an immovable monopoly.
Over charging is not rare. A busy cabbie doesn't dramatically over charge a few people. They'll overcharge everyone by a small amount.
Remember that one of the common user groups of taxis are "people who are drunk". These are vulnerable people who are less able to make sensible decisions, so the regulation needs to be a bit tighter.
That vulnerability means you don't want people with a history of sexual violence to be cab drivers.
There are other risks to passengers. You want to make sure all drivers have adequate insurance. We know that people are not capable of assessing that risk. You want to make sure that cabs are safe vehicles. For some cabs you want to make sure that they're capable of carrying disabled passengers (eg, people with guide dogs, or people with wheelchairs) so you specify that bigger companies include adapted cars.
The regulation exists for the same reason the HIPAA regulation exists: because there used to be so much abuse in cab companies.
Whether the current regulation makes much sense is another question - I don't think you'd end up with the current US style regulation if you tried to design a system from scratch.
All car owners have to deal with insurance, in case they get into an accident. Public transport needs a different kind of insurance. Regulation here ensures compliance.
Cab fleets, by virtue of being composed of multiple cabs, are able to comply with regulations regarding having a certain % of cabs and drivers prepared to handle disabled passengers. Uber, seeing as they exist in a weird limbo where they both represent all the cabs and none at the same time, has fought such restrictions (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/21/uber-disabi...).
A friend of mine recently got a German "Personenbeförderungsschein" (person transport permit) to work part-time at a chauffeur service (which, from what he told, is mostly identical to a taxi service).
There was no First Aid training involved as far as he told me, only a knowledge test of about 100 Points of Interest around the city, including routes to there and in some cases opening hours.
The theory is that taxicabs are a public service (especially in a city like New York).
My understanding of the history is that, around the time of the great depression, there was significant oversupply of taxis with fare wars and various unsavory tactics, including violence, for hustling business. From there, regulation grew over time helped along by the incumbents who benefited from it of course.
"the strikers, marching to the City Hall to-day to protest to the Mayor, stormed through the Lower Broadway, destroyed 30 cabs and assaulted 25 chauffeurs, leaving the men for the most part stripped of clothing lying in a bloody and dazed state in the streets. They then staged a final riot within sight of Laguardia's chambers, dragging men and women passengers from the taxis and beating the drivers unconscious."
Highly doubtful. In seven years and over a thousand cab rides in Taiwan that never happened to me. One one occasion my wallet fell out and the driver even called me to give it back.
Ripping off the foreigner is more of a mainland China thing.
I live in the south of Taiwan and uber just became available here over the weekend.
Taxi service is already good if you speak Chinese. You can call a taxi automated system, give them a street corner, and they will give you a time estimate. It is usually 3 minutes and they show up on time.
The benefit uber provides is to foreigners. If you do not speak Chinese, then you previously needed to flag down a cab.
There are a few local factors that change the dynamics of app-based ride services in Taiwan. They include a solid public transportation infrastructure in Taipei, widespread scooter use (I estimate at least 20% of the population owns or has access to scooters), and relatively low-cost taxi rates.
On the last point, a 45-minute cab ride from eastern Taipei to the international airport cost NT$1200, or about $36, and if you call a private limo service by phone it's NT$1000 for a big van, probably less for a car. By comparison, rates from Boston' airport are about $60 for a 30 minute ride and $40 for an Uber.
FWIW, I found Uber cars to be somewhat rare in Taipei and nonexistent in Chiayi, a smaller city in the south that I visited earlier this month. That could be the crackdown mentioned in the article, but I suspect the demand isn't sufficient owing to the factors mentioned earlier.
In Toronto, Canada, taxis run 24/7 with 2 shifts of drivers.
Insurance costs about $10,000 annually, more or less.
On a per hour basis that = $1.14 per hour. Uber should obtain insurance on their driver fleet on that basis
Taiwan's rule of law is mostly about connections, money and shady backroom deals (sure, most countries are like this, but it's a matter of degree). I'm sure this has come about because of taxi companies being unhappy rather than any proper legal reasoning.
The process leading to this was documented here: https://blog.pol.is/vtaiwan-uberx/
Registration was cited as one of the six consensus items by the e-deliberation process, and so far the only one that Uber has not yet assented to.
> According to the Highway Act, Uber has been fined NT$100,000 (approximately US$3,070) to NT$150,000 (approximately US$4,605). Uber drivers have been fined NT$50,000 (approximately US$1,535).
>There are also cases in which legal loopholes have allowed the company to continue its operations. For example, Uber plans to purchase commercial licenses for its drivers in Germany, where ride-sharing services are banned from operating without taxi licenses.
It's similar in the country I'm currently in - Uber works as a Taxi service and Uber drivers have Taxi licenses. Altho I would not call this a "loophole" as this is the route Uber should have taken from the get go in those places where they don't allow those without Taxi licenses to operate Taxi services.