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Comment by lfam | Hacker News Reader

In most places in the US, the local cab companies are terrible. They might answer the phone, they might show up, and they might try to scam you.

Imagine you call a taxicab for a medical emergency, and they never show up, or only after an hour.

Uber and Lyft are extremely popular because the apps always tell you if a driver will come, the drivers almost always arrive very quickly, and the price is set in advance.

I'd bet that most people younger than 25 years have never used a traditional taxi, and they never will. They don't even see them as an option.

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Not to mention that there are consequences if an Uber/Lyft driver blows off a confirmed ride, and even if they do, you can request another one immediately.

In the case of taxi dispatch, a car may never show up, and you won't know until you get tired of waiting, and there are no consequences for the taxi company or driver if they do this. Pre-Uber, in SF, the normal quoted wait from a taxi dispatcher was on the order of 20 minutes, which if anything was usually understated. If you're in a lot of pain you probably don't want to wait that long.

I would probably still call an ambulance for something I thought might be life-threatening, but for anything else I'd take a Lyft.

> In the case of taxi dispatch, a car may never show up, and you won't know until you get tired of waiting, and there are no consequences for the taxi company or driver if they do this.

depends on the country and the taxi company. England has a reasonably effective regulatory regime for taxis and cabs.

And for patient transport the NHS does use private drivers

Sure, but both the article and my comment are both about the US, where there are no consequences for no-shows. I'm not sure our government(s) here are the best places to regulate that sort of thing. Uber/Lyft-style accountability seems to be working really well, though, and the mode of operation eliminates the possibility that a driver will cancel on you and you won't know about it.

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