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Comment by justfor1comment | Hacker News Reader

I will have to get a driver's license if this thing crashes. I am part of the problem why Lyft and Uber lose so much money. I have been so lucky that Uber and Lyft became ubiquitous just when I was about to get a DL. I decided against the headache and costs of maintaining my own car. Never got a DL and kept using ride sharing services everywhere. Also, kept switching between Uber and Lyft based on who is offering me discounts that week. Seems like my VC funded lifestyle will come to an end if some new investors don't buy the ride sharing story.

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I hate driving, and I never bothered with getting the driver's license. Eventually, it got to a point where I just felt limited and embarrassed by not having a driver's license, and went took a few classes and dealt with it.

I was 24 when I got my driver's license and I've probably driven a dozen times total since then (rental cars in Hawaii, Colorado, or LA mostly). It's really easy, and I feel a lot better for having that ability. I'm 100% glad I did it and added that valuable life skill to my arsenal, despite still hating driving and still almost never using it.

I recommend it.

There are a lot of things you can't do if you can't drive. I was just in Nevada and Death Valley on vacation a few weeks ago. Utterly undoable without either yourself or a companion driving.

I suppose you can just shrug and be OK with pretty much staying in or near cities but that seems to close off a lot of options.

I also couldn't deal with day-to-day things without a car but that's at least somewhat manageable depending upon where you live and work.

ADDED: I'm not a typical Silicon Valley developer to be sure, but I couldn't even have done my first job absent a drivers license. It may be worth asking if you want to be employable outside of certain bubbles where you'll be the weird person who always needs a ride because they can't drive even though they don't have a disability.

> It may be worth asking if you want to be employable outside of certain bubbles where you'll be the weird person who always needs a ride because they can't drive even though they don't have a disability.

You say that as if only a tiny minority of jobs will let you get by without a car. Most white collar jobs will not require you to drive anywhere.

Leaving aside commuting; we'll assume you and friends/partner are fine with only living, working, and socializing where you can easily get around by public transit, walking, bike, Uber now and then and restricting your choices accordingly.

Every half-way senior engineer I know (and I'm not even talking sales, system engineers/solution architects, product managers, and so forth) routinely travel to customer sites or branch locations that require driving under at least some circumstances.

Uber/Lyft have absolutely helped with some edge cases. I was at a work event just a couple weeks ago where my default in the past would have been to rent a car and I didn't because, while the venue was about an hour drive from the airport, I didn't actually need to drive once I go there.

It is absolutely the expectation at most jobs that you can drive if need be.

I have never once in my career felt like I was held back by not having a car. The only occasion where driving was more convenient was during rare business trips where and we'd simply get a rental car.

If you're a white collar worker in NYC or SF, you're more likely than not not to own a car, or if you do, to use it almost exclusively for personal reasons and not for work reasons.

NYC in particular is something of an outlier. In any case, this thread was about not having a drivers license, i.e. unable to rent a car.

As a counterpoint, I've frequently had to drive to customers, job sites, etc. but then I mostly haven't lived or worked in a city.

I would say that suburban / rural America is more of the outlier. Most of the world's white collar workers work in transit-accessible cities, and the rest of the world is much less car-driven than the United States.

But yes, I'm in agreement with you that the DL is an essential skill and that not having it can be limiting.

> It is absolutely the expectation at most jobs that you can drive if need be.

You're making a broad generalization based on nothing but personal anecdote. In my personal experience, on the other hand, I don't know a single person who has ever needed to drive for work.

If I could choose I would never leave my apartment.

Surely just get your drivers licence regardless? Doesn't it cause pain and headache not having the ability to legally drive?

On second thought, I guess experience differs a lot based on location. Not having a drivers licence is pretty unimaginable for me where I live.

I totally get not buying a car under some circumstances given Lyft/Uber, ZipCar, and traditional rentals. I really have trouble with understanding not getting a drivers license other than in some very limited circumstances.

Your college friends are not going to give you rides forever. And your work options, living options, and vacation options are going to be quite limited. Obviously some people do it, but it's hard to imagine for a typical middle-class professional over the long term.

Even people I've known in Manhattan who put it off for a few years learned to drive eventually.

I don't know, I'm almost 30 and never got the license and know lots of people who never did either, my wife included. Not having a license has been slightly annoying maybe around 3 times in my life. Granted, the public transport in my city (Helsinki) is great, if I moved away I'd probably end up getting the license.

I guess I understand to some degree. It's a lifestyle choice. I don't go to some places that would require specialized vehicles and skills like high-clearance 4WD. And traveling internationally I certainly default to itineraries that don't require me to rent a car.

On the other hand, I know a lot of city dwellers and even those few who don't own cars because they don't need one day to day are constantly using either short-term or longer-term rentals to get around the surrounding area for various activities. (Or doing those activities with people who have cars though that tends to become more difficult as your circle of friends gets older.)

We budget around $350-$400 a month for Uber expenses, mostly for our teenage son to get to work from school, from school home on the days we can’t get him, and just if he wants to meet his friends. That’s still cheaper than even a $200/month reliable car (he’s too big to get into a little car) and car insurance which would easily be $250+ a month for a teenage male. My wife and I could probably come close to breaking even with only one car with me working from home 3 days a week.

Uber doesn't technically allow their drivers to carry your child alone.

I’ve heard that but he’s never had a problem.

On another note if I had a daughter, I would be more careful. I don’t think anyone is going to bother my 6 foot 200 pound son.....

I have a DL but haven't used it in years. Bicycle and bus/trains work fine in my country.

DL is just a legal requirement. The bigger question is should I be driving sporadically? I find that quite dangerous. Imagine a guy who only drives 3-4 times a year and that too when he is on vacation at some place he has never travelled before. That's a huge risk of getting into an accident. Driving skills just like playing the piano or any other skill would deteriorate without practice.

While we don't have perfect information for either Lyft, or Uber, a while ago it was reported that Uber at least was profitable within the San Francisco market, along with some other major urban areas.

A large part of their losses are down to expansion. The markets they've become established in are profitable.

This sounds like a fairly strong buy argument, so it must be reflected somewhere in the IPO documentation. Could anyone who read deeply into it share a link to more details?

how many cities have the density of san francisco and new york?

Good question. Of the top 100 urban areas in the world by population, sorted by density, the San Francisco bay area is number 88 and New York City is number 90.

In addition, Los Angeles is number 87. The only other entry in North America is Toronto-Hamilton (#83).

The top 90 cities (i.e. up to and including New York City) have a combined population of 965 million.

Also note that smallest in the top 100 is 4.3 million, so this probably misses a lot of smaller but more dense cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_by_populat...

City density is a really tough metric. Most of NYC's land area is Staten Island which is essentially suburban. The transit situation is much different for NYC as a whole than it is for Manhattan.

You run into the same sorts of things with most cities. Urban density is at least somewhat a function of fairly arbitrary political boundaries.

If you’re in a mature Lyft/Uber market, it’s making money on you, possibly a lot. Both have healthy unit economics in modestly mature markets. The only time they lose money on rides is where the pooling is immature.

I have a separate credit card for tracking my usage of ride sharing services. I can actually give you the exact numbers. It's cost me approximately $6000 over the last 3 years or $2000/year. I think the rides are getting more expensive with time but I can probably put up with them until they start costing more than $4000/year. At that point owning a car might be better.

Not sure I understand what you're suggesting here.

In my case it was not buying a second car. Lyft is cheaper and more convinient.

Uber/Lyft (as well as other relatively recent options like ZipCar) definitely make a difference at the margins where a couple, for example, might have previously wanted a second car for occasional use.

The price wars can not last forever. Eventually Uber and Lyft will be like coke and Pepsi. They will find a way to compete on everything but the price.

I am about to join you.

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