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Regulations on cars-for-hire exist for a reason: to protect the safety of passengers by ensuring a minimal level of competence and to ensure recompense via adequate capital or insurance in the event of an accident.

A minimal level of competence? Safety of passengers? I've taken more than a few rides on all of SF taxis, Uber black cars, Uber X, and Lyft. SF taxis had the most hasty drivers, and a couple I really didn't feel comfortable riding with at all. With Uber/X and Lyft, I've never felt anything but safe, and I have never been harassed for using a credit card to pay.

These regulations work remarkably well, which is why so many people think they are unnecessary.

If everything works so well, why are so many people using Lyft? Have you ever called a taxi and not had it show up because it found another fare on the way to pick you up?

I'm sorry, but taxi service is broken in SF (the only place I've used it extensively). I prefer to make my own decision on what is safe and what isn't. I don't need a government that takes money from vested interests to tell me what's safe.

I drove a taxi a while back (not in SF) and I have to agree that a lot of taxis are extremely dubious in their level of safety. I only figured out after a spin-out that the company car I'd been assign had bald tires with uneven tire-pressure. And well, obviously I was inexperienced too or I might spotted that earlier but that's not uncommon.

But that is after all the regulations. With no regulation at all, things wind-up even diciers. Will you check the tire pressure of every car you get in?

The reason taxis are unsafe is because drivers and companies don't make much and try to extract every last dime from their rides and their cars and so-forth.

With more competition, less money to per drive and so-forth, I couldn't imagine how dodgy things will get.

I'd like to think I was pleasant and courteous. I doubt you can judge driver's skill by looking at his or her face so your eagerness to judge for yourself seems foolish.

I can believe Uber-now or Lyft-now looks good. Will you know when the safety goes out the window, considering there is constant pressure for that to happen?

I don't know why you think government regulation ensures safety. When it comes down to it, you're getting in a car with someone you've almost certainly never met, and trusting them to get you safely to a location. I don't claim to judge drivers' skill by looking at their face, but which of these situations seems more safe to you? Which is a better experience?

Lyft: I open up the app and get an approximate time of when I can get picked up if I decide to order a car so I can decide if it's the right choice. I then get a picture of the car, a picture of the driver, and the drivers' rating on my phone, and I can watch them come to me on a map. When they come, I'm greeted by a friendly face who going to get more or less money based on how well they service me. I know the car isn't going to be more than 12 years old, will be in good condition, and that the driver has had a background check.

Taxi: I call a company and hope that the cab comes. If it comes I have to try to figure out if they take credit card or if they're going to lie about their machine being broken. They drive me as fast as possible to my destination, without regard for comfort, because they're getting paid based on speed. I don't know anything about this person's driving record, or if other people have had generally good experiences with the driver.

You may very well have been a good driver, and I've taken taxis with good drivers. I've also taken a taxi with a driver who mumbled to himself (no, there was no phone/ear piece) and drove at a crazy pace without wearing a seatbelt. How long do you think he would last on Lyft or Uber, where drivers will get kicked off if they get rated too low?

I'll take Lyft every time, even if I see a taxi I could hail and get more quickly.

Read what I wrote. I make no claims about my ability - I'm a far better hacker than I was a driver or the goodness or taxis in general.

Like I said, I can totally believe Lyft is better than taxi services now. But the thing about any purely private system is that everything they do is going to ultimately be a cost-benefit trade to them and everyone in the equation is going to be trying to figure out new ways of making money. Look at email, look at craiglist, look at AirBnb. The large large scale produces problems unlike small scale. If someone comes up with X scam that lets them profit from Lyft or whoever in a dangerous way, will Lyft be spending it's entire margin tracking that problem down. Maybe.

The only thing about government regulation is that the state has authority to be more invasive than a private entity can be and is not limited by a cost benefit analysis. Government regulation is inefficient but unfortunately haven't yet demonstrated an iron clad better way to make sure things like commercial driving, electrical and other infrastructure work remain safe. It's problematic but it would also be problematic to do a large experiment with the physical safety of people.

Check your impressions about Uber - they have never pretended to be a ridesharing service. Uber fares are metered and non-negotiable. The controversy with Uber is that it straddles livery car service and traditional taxis, and that makes its legal position fuzzy.

Uber is distinctly different from what the article talks about here: Sidecar for example does project itself as a "ridesharing" service, where fares are determined by the rider (with not-very-subtle "suggestions" by the service) and optional (though of course, not really).

I'm a fan of upsetting the corrupt and outdated taxicab industry, but at the same time I have few sympathies for Sidecar and the like when governments rightly call them out on their bullshit: they are not ridesharing services, no matter how dumb they play.

You're missing the key regulation these services are trying to do an end-run around: an artificial cap on the number of taxi licenses allowed in these cities. Nothing to do with safety, just an officially-sanctioned cartel.

Compliance with all existing regulations would in many jurisdictions require the purchase of existing taxi drivers' medallions (or the equivalent) at exorbitant rates - and not one extra cab would be allowed on the street after that transfer is complete.

You're making it sound like regulatory compliance for Uber and Lyft is as simple as ensuring that their drivers are competent and providing some means of recompense for wronged customers. That simply isn't true.

I don't think that regulatory compliance is as simple as ensuring that drivers are competent and providing some means of recompense. That is merely the purpose of enforcement, not the mechanism. The mechanism is a great deal more complex, and involves multiple inspections: vehicle inspections, garage inspections, drive interviews, random audits, a good deal of compliance-related paperwork, etc.

It is an artifical cap that is deliberately intended to inflate prices above marginal costs, to ensure that market participants achieve sufficent revenue that they can actually afford the requirements (i.e., insurance, maintenance, etc.). Without that cap, taxi cab and charter car rates would drop to unprofitable levels as the influx of drivers would push rates to the floor. Cab and charter car service providers would skimp on costs, most likely maintenance and insurance, which would place passengers at risk. However, it is more likely that most cabs/charter cars would be independent cars.

It is also in place to minimize the level of market participants to maintain the feasibility of enforcement. It's possible to effectively enforce these regulations with a dozen or so companies with a handful of regulators. With hundreds of independent market participants, the sheer amount of work to conduct normal inspections or other enforcement activities would overwhelm the enforcement agency, requiring either substantial fee increases, tax increases, or roulette enforcement.

Did you read the article? Uber is definitely not being served hear, and they don't call themselves a ride sharing services.

Besides that, I agree with your point about these services really being car's for hire, but calling themselves ride sharing services.

Some relevant facts:

1) Ridesharing has been around for decades. There were high-tech phone-based ridesharing programs in the 90s. I don't think anyone claims the idea of sharing rides itself is new.

2) There are many ridesharing services including us (http://www.ridejoy.com), Zimride, and Carpooling.com, where drivers give passengers a ride to someplace the driver is already going.

Lyft (a new offshoot of Zimride) and Sidecar have appropriated/redefined "rideshare" because it sounds friendlier and less commercial than "car service". Uber doesn't use the word rideshare.

3) Having used both Lyft and Sidecar extensively, the fact that it's a commercial transaction doesn't change the fact that the experience with either one is generally as good as, sometimes much better than, actual taxicabs in SF. It's also a bit cheaper and you're more likely to actually get one. Hopefully the state just requires adequate protections instead of killing these very useful services.

The regulation to ensure a minimal level of competence is a driver's license and the regulation to ensure recompense is (as you mention) insurance. Both of which are required of every driver whether a taxi or not. The regulations on taxis exist to protect taxi owners.

And yes it is clear that Uber and Lyft are taxi services.

Uber is in an entirely different legal category. All of their drivers are registered. Their main issue is essentially a turf war between limos and taxis.

Lyft and sidecar are being accused of enabling unregistered professional transportation.