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Comment by Smrchy | Hacker News Reader

I live in Germany and i am happy that some things are more regulated here.

I like that Taxi companies need to have extra insurance and the cars and drivers are checked on a regular basis. Just like the TÜV (a mandatory checkup every two years for every vehicle) makes sure all vehicles have functioning lights, brakes, proper tires etc.

This ruling only makes sure Uber follows those same rules other transportation businesses follow as well. There is competition in the transportation business here but there is no room for people sidestepping completely sane rules everybody should agree on.

I am in no way affiliated with the taxi business and i like lower fares too. But not at the cost of safety and less checks for cars and drivers.

Once Uber agrees to comply i am happy to use their app and their drivers. I doubt they will be able to operate much cheaper though - i am fine with that.

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Genuine question: Is Uber really cheaper than taxi? Honestly: in Italy it's not. It's hell expensive, probably a bit more expensive than usual cabs - which are incredibly expensive by definition. So yeah, this "We are a startup", "Silicon Valley" thing is just a horrible excuse to avoid complying with regulations.

If regulations in Silicon Valley (or wherever else) allow Uber business model to be sustainable, good for them. This isn't something obvious when you go international and it is part of the challenge. Simply not giving a fuck is just mediocre and you deserve to cease operations. Period.

Not complying with regulations is pretty popular here in Italy, too! Indeed, there are so many regulations, that being able to get away with not complying with them is a distinct competitive advantage, and the market has, in many places, selected for companies and individuals whose skills mostly lie in that direction, rather than actually creating value.

See: Berlusconi

In Manchester, UK they absolutely are. Especially at night: what would be a £20 ride in a hackney and a £15 fare for a pre-booked company is about £10 with Uber. That's for 5 miles in 20 minutes.

Add onto that the ease-of-use and some level of assurance that if your cabbie takes you round the houses you can get a refund and it's a no brainer round here.

While the plural of anecdote is not data, I've seen pretty much these exact same figures. The Uber's here look identical to our normal private hire taxi's though, so I'm assuming their drivers are in fact legally compliant?

For the record, all the drivers I've spoken to have worked for a local company beforehand and, while earning about the same amount, are far happier now.

Wow, that's a lot. In Bristol UK I can get a taxi from a taxi rank to home, which is just over 5 miles and takes about 20 mins, at 4am, for £10 max. Not tried Uber

In Berlin, the last time I've been there (beginning of this year), Uber was priced just slightly below the normal taxi. There was no UberX, so you did get the extra quality.

> Genuine question: Is Uber really cheaper than taxi? Honestly: in Italy it's not. It's hell expensive, probably a bit more expensive than usual cabs

There are different Uber products that come with varying prices. In Sydney, I can make a trip with UberX (regular ride sharing) that's $10, or with UberBlack (licensed hire car operators) which would be $30 to $40.

UberX is definitely about 20% cheaper than taxis here in Sydney.

In London, UK... it depends.

Late at night when the roads are relatively empty, the black cab is still damn efficient at moving you from A-B cheaply. The key is to be moving fast and not get stuck in traffic.

When there is traffic, then the minicab that doesn't meter the fare depending on time... solely distance... proves to be the cheapest. These are nearly all small, local firms, so your mileage on price may vary.

Uber do work out cheaper for the non-perfect conditions that tend to exist most of the time... some traffic, some speed.

What would be good is an app that polls Hailo, Uber, Lyft and some local firms and gives you the cheaper of all options.

But then, you know this is a race to the bottom, and service will eventually suffer if people buy purely because of price.

London has the well known taxi test you have to take. Can Uber drivers manage this? Can you navigate London by car successfully via GPS?

Only black cab drivers take The Knowledge. Minicab (pre-booked private hire) drivers in London mostly use GPS.

The GPSs work OK in London. The black cabbies are probably a bit better at knowing which routes will be quickest but there's not much in it. Black cabs have an advantage in that they can use taxi only lanes / roads such as Oxford Street while Uber can't.

Uber is competing with the minicabs in London. The black cabs are in a different, heavily regulated market; more knowledge (roads and traffic patterns), reserved lanes, and availability catered to central London.

I've spoken with Uber drivers that used to be minicab drivers. They used to pay weekly rent on the GPS/meter/radio they are required to use. 200£/week + petrol + insurance + maintenance really adds up.

Black cab drivers come from the pool of minicab (and now Uber) drivers. To become a black cab driver requires passing the knowledge and to learn it you need a lot of practice. Only practical as a minicab or hired driver.

Depends a bit if you are talking Uber (the luxury service) or UberX (the cheap one). In London I'd say UberX is about 30% less than black cabs. Uber proper is more expensive.

In Berlin it's very close to the cost of a taxi anyway (you can check it on the Uber app, it's pretty funny).

I really don't see what the fuss is about, in this context. If it were actually much cheaper then yeah sure, but as it stands they're not really much competition for cabs. Especially considering their attempts to circumvent safety regulations.

In Zürich/Switzerland, the cost is about the same and so is the convenience of ordering a car as all the Taxi companies serving Zürich have their own app that works like the Uber app does.

Me personally, I think I would rather prefer purchasing a regular Taxi ride by an official Taxi company. Even if it did cost more (which, again, it doesn't really), for that money I pay extra, I get some of the additional guarantees like maintained cars, garanteed-insured drivers and quicker travel (official taxis are allowed to use special lanes reserved for buses and taxis, something Uber would never get away with).

In a country that's not as price-sensitive and where regulations already provide some clear additional benefits for official Taxis, I think there's potential for both Uber (fewer guarantees, no permission to use special lanes, but cheaper) and official Taxis.

According to press reports, Uber is currently subsidizing every ride with a $20 incentive to the driver (which seems a pretty clear cut instance of predatory pricing to me, but Swiss anti-trust enforcement is fairly lax). Once that subsidy goes away, either Uber pricing or driver income will take a turn for the worse.

Is there any evidence Uber is actually less safe? I mean beyond the fact that a man blessed by state aegis checks taxi's breaks while regular plebeian mechanics do the same for Uber, what is the evidence Uber is sidestepping completely sane rules and not just red tape made to look like sane rules?

Not anecdotes like "Uber driver did X" - I'm sure for each such anecdote one can find "taxi driver did X" but real data on the scale of Germany - or any other scale like this?

Well, Uber will never have an accident. It will always be some guy who happened to have a friend on board. That's the beauty of it, you are offering a professional service but the moment there is any kind of trouble you can fall back on being a private individual driving his car.

You realize you are avoiding the question. It would be very easy to assemble such statistics as Uber drivers are clearly identified and any court could easily request data about all Uber driving requests (anonymized if there are privacy concerns) and correlate them with reports of traffic incidents. I suspect, however, that there is no such data, and nobody even ever cared about gathering such data - local cartels screamed to local politicians for help, and politicians obliged by protecting the cartel from competition. All talks about "safety" is just as smokescreen as nobody actually did any safety studies and has any data. Otherwise we'd seen that data plastered everywhere, taxi cartels wouldn't miss that chance if they had it.

> You realize you are avoiding the question.

No, you're entirely missing my point. Uber does not exist as such, it is just an app. It does not have drivers on its payroll, it does not have a fleet of cars, it does not have - nor does it likely want - to collect accident statistics.

And as for that cartel, there is as far as I can see no such thing. All there is are a bunch of laws that Uber could choose to honour but has chosen not to.

If they comply with those rules and they are still banned then you could argue about cartels and such, until then that is premature.

It may not collect the statistics - but people claiming it is unsafe should. Note that none of the Uber drivers is actually required to stop driving - they still can drive as much as they wish, however unsafe and dangerous they are. The only thing they can't do is to earn money. Is the money the thing that makes them unsafe?

>>> If they comply with those rules and they are still banned then you could argue about cartels and such, until then that is premature.

Sorry, that makes no sense. That's like saying "we're not banning blogging, we just require every blog would have an editor, a corrector, a staff of minimum five reporters, an HR department, a building and a printed paper copy, since the newspapers do it just fine, so we're just for responsible reporting". Of course the regulations protect the cartels - that's why these regulations exist in the first place, and saying "we just require them to follow regulations" is completely disingenuous - because following regulations is possible only by becoming part of the cartel.

My main argument is insurance.

It doesn't matter whether Uber rides are more dangerous or not. If something happens, the victim is left in the rain when it was an Uber ride.

"Private ride-sharing" is insured. "Uber ride-sharing" isn't.

And that's not because of old laws or lobbyism. That's because of all the standard insurance contracts that state clearly that they don't cover businesses, only private driving.

You keep using the word 'cartel', taxi companies in Germany are not normally considered to be a cartel, merely a professional association. Just like there is no hotel cartel against AirBnb there is no taxi cartel against Uber.

Those are simply industries that have become regulated to some degree over time and now newcomers have decided that these regulations do not apply to them because they can get away with it, leaving their operators (drivers, airbnb hosts) to deal with the consequences.

That trick works, to some extent and in countries where there really are cartels in the hotel business and taxi services I welcome such developments. Millions of $ for a medallion are ridiculous, and rules solely created to keep competitors out are so too.

But the German taxi situation is not accurately described in that way.

> But the German taxi situation is not accurately described in that way.

In fact PBefG §13(5) explicitly states that new applicants for taxi licenses are to be taken into account.

> It would be very easy to assemble such statistics as Uber drivers are clearly identified and any court could easily request data

Let me explain a little about the german law system (IANAL, so take it with a grain of salt). This is a preliminary injunction granted by request of a competitor. So what happens is that the court decides on the base of written arguments from the side requesting (this case roughly the union of german cab companies) and a "Schutzschrift" (written counter) from the accused (Uber). The court does not request anything. Uber could have provided such statistics if it wanted to, but since they have no bearing on this case I doubt it would have helped. The cited violations are all from the Personenbeförderungsgesetz and the court has preliminary decided that UberPop constitutes an illegal and unlicensed Taxi service. This is not about safety, it's about blatantly breaking a federal law.

Uber can appeal and the case will go to a regular court hearing where more arguments can be exchanged. Until then, the injunction can be enforced which is a severe blow for UberPop.

Now we can argue whether or not those regulations are sensible, but that's not for you, me or Uber to decide, it's a thing that gets decided in the Bundestag. Or Uber could restructure its service to comply with the law, but then it would not be as financially interesting as before.

this; afaik Uber takes no responsibility for the drivers themselves, they just offer a service to link freelance drivers to people in need of a ride.

As for the service quality etc, with Uber I guess people will have to have experienced a poor driver and leave a poor rating. I think it's a matter of time before people with crappy cars start driving for Uber, get into accidents or create generally unpleasant experiences for some users, and drop Uber's reputation downwards.

actually every time you dont leave a good feedback, uber will contact you back to clear it up and contact the driver (will not say who left the feedback) and ensure this was legitimate or otherwise reimburse your trip (on top of making sure the driver's star score is severely affected)

if you're a customer with 4-5 stars rating you'll get 4-5 stars drivers, always, all the time.

This makes the probability of bad services very low (and in fact null in my experience so far - i'm pretty sure they select 5 stars by default for your 5 first ever rides too)

this; afaik Uber takes no responsibility for the drivers themselves

Not exactly true, they provide insurance for when drivers are between rides: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2454988,00.asp

Super, someone should contact this family then:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/02/should-car-services-provide...

I'm not aware of any insurance policy that pays retroactively.

Yes, silly family to cross the street in front of an uber car between rides before they got insured for that. They should have known better.

You seem to assume I think Uber shouldn't pay. I don't. I meant what I said, and nothing else.

What exactly is the issue here? How is this different from her being struck by any other car/driver?

I'm not sure what the laws in the US are like, but in Germany that would already be covered by the mandatory insurance every car needs to have, before being allowed onto the streets.

Commercial drivers need commercial insurance.

In Germany the driver would have regular insurance, unless they're working for a cab company when they'd have commercial insurance.

The US situation is a bit more complicated because of liability - is the driver liable? Or the driver's employers?

I see. Thanks!

One of the problems with UberPop is that people use their regular private insurance that does not cover commercial activities. I'm a bit uncertain on what the result would be - I think the victim would still get paid, but the insurance would recover the costs from the insurance owner. Still, that's not legal.

It is covered by the driver's insurance. According to the victim's attorney, they offered $15000.

Yep! Or, say, "some guy" who just happened to be driving his personal car when he decided take a drunk female passenger from a nightclub to, instead of home, say maybe a motel room...

https://www.google.co.jp/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=uber+...

Example: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/02/should-car-services-provide...

Such an accident may could happen, but then according to the German requirements it would be properly insured.

The previous 'Uber in Germany' discussions were about insurance coverage, something that most (all?) Uber drivers would lack supposedly.

So yes, there's evidence that Uber is less safe. Not in the 'drivers are reckless' or 'vehicles are crashing a lot' sense, but in the 'someone covers your .. behind' sense.

So Uber themselves cover insurance for drivers and their passengers. Is that not enough?

Do they?

And if they do, what exactly is insured and how high is the coverage?

Can you point out to a credible source for this assertion of yours (which I find hard to believe), which is not an Uber blog entry, or some astroturfing organization?

They have published the insurance certificate:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/234793785/Certificate-of-Liability...

Good luck using that in Germany.

Oh, fair enough. As far as I can tell, they haven't published anything on that regard.

Interesting comment on that page too, a driver was ticketed for not having a valid commercial insurance (ticket copy linked to imgurl).

No.

See the excellent answer here [1]. Next up on that list for me would be the 'license'. I have a license that allows me to drive every (street legal) truck, up to 40t. I'm also allowed to drive busses (they fall under the same category), IF they're mostly empty (I think up to 8 people are okay) and it's not a commercial ride (i.e. 8 friends, not 8 paying passengers).

If I want to do something like that, I need an additional license. Like every cab driver does. This isn't something that Uber can cover. The might be able to require their users to have this license (and prove it), but .. that's part of what the court is trying to say here, for all I understand.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8256398

8 is correct, the actual rule is '9 including the driver', so you're spot on.

I understand the requirement for drivers to be licensed for what they're doing (accepting fares, just like how UberBlack drivers are required to be licensed hire car operators), but that's not what I was talking about.

In that case I'm confused. What _are_ you talking about?

This thread is about the reasons why Uber isn't legal and needs to start following the law. One requirement for that is the insurance, one completely different requirement is the license for commercial transport for each driver that .. well .. operates a cab. Whatever the company is called.

(Deep within my soul I really dislike this 'Hah, your laws are outdated and wrong, we will liberate you' type of services from abroad and I snicker every time German media talks about 'Uber' - a term that is usually connected to the German language, to über - being fined for being utterly careless (or reckless) about their operation in Germany. It's quite ironic in my little world)

I was replying to your comment where you said, paraphrased "Uber is unsafe because most, if not all, Uber drivers aren't insured.

And then I said 'Uber provides insurance. Is this not enough?'

I'm sorry. At this point I might need to pull the 'English as a foreign language' excuse card.

So.. 'Uber provides insurance. Is this not enough?' - 'No, because even IF (see the discussion elsewhere about whether that is actually the case. I'd trust the non-believers for now) they do, that is not enough to be safe. There are more regulations that are targeting safety. Like the license [1] for commercial transport, which requires a healthy driver (medical checkup), is limited to 5 years and needs to be renewed, makes sure that the driver has a clean record (both w/ the police and the relevant institute for traffic violations) etc. etc."

I'm unsure how that was NOT what you were talking about. "Is this, providing an insurance IF THAT IS REAL, not enough (to operate in Germany, to be 'safe')"? "No."

(I'd be glad to understand where we're not aligned. If this is a failure based on my reading comprehension skills I'd like you to point out what I missed so that I can improve here)

1: Maybe Google Translate might give more insight: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führerschein_zur_Fahrgastbeförd...

Although not a fan of Über, I'm glad taxis are being disrupted in Australia!

Taxis are a joke, there are regular complaints about credit card skimming (including myself!) and reports of unsafe driving, sexual harassment and refusals to accept rides if not in the driver's best interest.

but, the state gave them a sticker and collected fees so...

100% agree.

One thing that confuses me a bit - isn't Uber in Europe focusing on professional limousine drivers? Shouldn't they be checked&regulated anyhow?

It's understandable that something like UberX wouldn't work in countries like in the SW/A/G area. We have those regulations in place for good reasons. I am sure they will find ways to comply.

ps: sorry for writing sw/a/g for switzerland/austria/germany - instead of the german d/a/ch - as soon as it's in your head you can't get it out there anymore. ;)

Yesterday, I tried uber in berlin for the first time. It was a professional limousine driver, with insurance and a permit to work as a driver. So, for uber black that's true, while it's not for uberpop. i guess uberpop is really the problem.

UberBlack is not affected by this injunction, so yes.

Correct, this only affects Uber Pop as far as I can see.

Which is exactly the reason they got sued by the association.

+1. Exactly. Not all legislation is bad.

i lived in germany for several years - and taxi drivers werent even nearly as good or making me feel nearly as safe as uber drivers.

its like 30% of the taxi drivers are pure assholes in berlin/hamburg. (heck its not so different in other big international cities).

I had hundred of uber drives and not a single bad or even sub-optimal ride.

Thus I very strongly disagree with your statement.

On a side note, taxi stuff works like a mafia - a "legal" version of it. The regulations enforces that - not the safety of anybody.

Yup, agreed, yet customer satisfaction doesn't cover for you in case of an accident. And since cab companies comply with the regulations what Uber is trying is to create an unfair competition by ignoring them.

So the way to do it is to follow regulations first and then find a way to 'disrupt'. Yes, that might slow down the growth. Thats probably why they chose to ignore it and that's why now the state is hitting them back.

Actually this is business as usual. Uber will continue to fight the decision, a compromise will be found and the prices will go down, which is good for the customer.

I am in no way affiliated with Uber and I like safery and checks for car and drivers too. But not at the cost of restrictive government-granted monopolies and crony capitalism.

> I like that Taxi companies need to have extra insurance and the cars and drivers are checked on a regular basis. Just like the TÜV (a mandatory checkup every two years for every vehicle) makes sure all vehicles have functioning lights, brakes, proper tires etc.

Maybe it makes you happy, but is it necessary? I doubt that it is. It seems like regulation for very little purpose. Accidents due to brake failure are exceedingly rare, and police will see if your lights are out (more frequently than once every two years).

Shouldn't regulation should be about more than warm fuzzy feelings?

The mandatory vehicle checkup (TÜV) does more than check the lights. They also check whether the car is structurally sound -- any broken beams or similar. I'm happy that they exist.

> I doubt that it is.

I worked on cars a lot, old ones, newer ones and everything in between (oldest: 1961 Mini, newest, my VW bus from 2007).

Cars that are used more frequently and that do lots of stops/starts wear faster and tend to fail more frequently than cars that are used infrequently (within limits, letting a car sit for years and then using it is also not good).

Typical wear items: boots, joints, brakes (pads/discs), clutch, handbrake, steering housing and associated items (tie rod ends!), all consumables (including fluids, filters), lights (police telling you your lights are out is too late), safety belts, structural elements (rust, badly repaired accident damage) and on and on.

Having those inspected more frequently when you operate a car (many taxis are operated in shifts and I don't see any reason why uberpop drivers could not share a car for maximum profits) for the purpose of transporting passengers is in my opinion not a luxury.

On occasion I go by cab here in Romania and I'm always very happy to be alive at my destination, the number and severity of accidents involving cabs here is simply scary.

Give me German regulated cabs any time over the cabs here, possibly Uber could improve on that but I'm sceptical about what Uber pop would look like here.

  Shouldn't regulation should be about more than warm fuzzy feelings?

Absolutely!

In this case the regulation determines streetworthyness of a vehicle, which is considered part of public transport infrastructure.

I, for one, rather get a cab, which is regularly checked and safe to be driven.

Would you suggest that Ryan Air, since they are the cheapest airline far and wide, should flout regulation, which aims at ensuring the airworthyness of their fleet, so that they can offer cheap tickets?

There're A LOT of checks your car has to pass in germany. The "TÜV" (the "institute" that checks cars) are pretty hard on every car to make sure that the car is secure and safe.

But not only that, if you have holes in your exhaust and it makes awful noises, you need to fix it. If the rubbers on your windshield wipers is in a bad condition, you need to fix them. If certain parts of your suspension or the steering mechanics wiggle and wobble, you need to fix them.

After each 2-year check you have a certain time to get your car fixed. After everything is fixed, you'll get some kind of license plate sticker with the next TÜV-expiration date (very hard to copy). The Police will check those stickers regulary (if they see your car) and if it's invalid they'll stop you and you have to pay a big fee.

IMHO this is a good thing. Sure there are some stupid rules in place, but overall it makes the streets safer. And if you look at german roads, most cars are in perfect condition, even the older ones.

And as someone mentioned before, those rules are even harder enforeced on transportation companies or taxi drivers.

screw people that can't afford to fix their windshield wiper at the moment... fine them.

If they can't afford to fix their windshield wipers (15 EUR at most for new rubber blades), then there's no way they can afford to drive in Germany on a regular basis. 12 gallons of gasoline is around 75 EUR, or $100.

And TÜV costs about 70 or 80 EUR - not to mention the annual car registration fees.

So, yes, if you cannot manage to fix your windshield wipers, your car should not be on the road. Take the bus.

I agree. Owning a car in germany is pretty expensive. I pay 1200-1300 euros per year (insurance + tax) + money for gas.

That may be true and I'm glad that (at least some of us) in the US we strive to make driving accessible to everyone, lower their cost of living, and allowing them to take that money and feed their kids - all by allowing personal responsibility. Not wasting their time and money by fining them when they very well might not need the windshield wiper at that very moment.

Do you have any numbers to suggest the cost is worth the benefit - or that there is any benefit what-so-ever?

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