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Comment by paulie_a | Hacker News Reader

Personally I love Uber and avoid taxis as much as possible. The worst Uber ride was still far better than the best taxi I've taken. A driver might be chatty and you have a great conversation, or they just stay quiet. Either ways a much better experience than the angry cab driver.

I was a little shocked when Uber sent me my stats for last year 1000+ rides.

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This has also been my experience. I think a meta here is that the vast majority of cab drivers don't, and can't, own their cab. Medallion cabs, for instance, are sold based on bids and have gone for upwards of $2 million and as "low" as around $500k. And in some places they have government granted monopolies meaning playing this game is the only way to drive a cab.

So most drivers rent their taxi, often by the day. And since fares are front-loaded (you earn a lot more picking up 100 people for 5 miles, than 1 person for 500 miles) it creates an incentive for taxi drivers to go crazy. Granted that same pressure is ostensibly there for Uber drivers, but I think it's different when your car is your car rather than a temporary asset you just dropped a fair chunk of change to rent for a single day.

Somehow transportation, world wide, always ends up in these sort of scummy monopolistic rackets.

I've noticed that Uber drivers tend to drive much slower and more cautiously than taxi drivers, and break traffic laws far less often. As a result when I really need to get somewhere quickly I do tend to look for a taxi first.

Personally I would say it is a mix. There are some Uber drivers that definitely can be a bit more aggressive but still safe. I suppose it depends on the area/time of day but I'll walk past the line of taxis to get an Uber. If it takes 2 minutes longer to get to my destination, the experience is much better. Hell there have been a few times I wanted the trip to take longer because of the pleasant and engaging conversation.

One pattern I've noticed, taxis honk their horn constantly and obnoxiously. Uber drivers rarely do it. When you hear someone honking their horn for upwards of ten straight seconds, it's a taxi.

Question, are Uber drivers penalized for speeding or hard cornering, stopping, etc. that would indicate aggressive driving? I would assume Uber could know this based on GPS and accelerometer readings from the driver's app.

I am highly doubtful. Uber GPS is terrible in general so I'm guessing they don't have that level of granularity. Plus what do you define as aggressive driving? It can vary depending on traffic flow and patterns of the area.

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