City Council has postponed a conversation and possible ordinance changes that would affect ride-share programs, such as Uber and Lyft, until the General Assembly potentially decides on statewide regulations. Charlotte wants driver to go through city background checks, though the companies argue they implement their own background checks. A potential ordinance would also deregulate cab fare, which is set by the city, to allow for competition.
Former Mayor Patrick Cannon will be sentenced on Oct. 14, not the original date of late September, because a defense witness will be out of town. Cannon faces 20 years in prison.
South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius has been convicted of culpable homicide in the death of his girlfriend and could still face prison time. Pistorius was found not guilty of murder in the incident in which the judge agreed he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder. But he was charged for the incident in which he fired four shots into a bathroom his girlfriend had locked herself in on Valentine’s Day last year.
In technology news, you’ll have to wait at least a month to order an iPhone 6, and Yahoo says it feels “threatened” by the U.S. government.
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2014.
Ride sharing is when two or more people who work in the same building carpool to and from work.
When you contact a company who sends a car to take you to your destination for money, that is a Taxi. What is so hard to understand about that?
DLP,
It is none of your business, nor the government’s, to impede my ability to hire whomever I want to drive me wherever I want to go.
It’s precisely the kind of government Ration & Control system you endorse that breeds the Patrick Cannons of the world.
The Uber/Lyft debate is one of the few issues where I find myself squarely siding with the small government folks. I think it is much like Ebay and other direct seller-to-buyer systems…the sellers or drivers are not licensed by any governing body, but they are quickly rated and self-filtered by the other users, and I feel very confident taking a ride from someone with a 4.5/5 star rating or buying something from someone with a 99.5% approval rating. That is much more than I can say when I step in a taxi, as I’ve been hyper aware of how terrible my experiences with them usually are since I started using Uber whenever possible. Just because there is a certain system in place for regulating taxis doesn’t mean its necessarily an effective one. I would like to see half the effort being put into shutting down Uber/Lyft applied to improving Taxis to make them competitive.
I don’t object to your freedom to hire them. I object to them running a business selling rides in violation of the regulations governing Taxi service. Taxis, and other service businesses, are regulated to protect YOU from disreputable business men. It is not fair to regulate some taxi services and not others.
My point is that those regulations governing taxi services don’t seem to work that well or have any benefit that these companies haven’t already created a better solution for. Taxis with credit card logos on their windows arriving at a destination only to claim their machine is broken and coerce the passengers into paying cash is completely commonplace, I’d wager it happens to me 1 out of 3 times taking a taxi anywhere. Driving roundabout routes to run up the meter is commonplace. Dangerous driving is commonplace. These significant drawbacks and abuses of the system are actually taken care of by the Uber model’s payment and ratings systems.
If Uber/Lyft drivers need to pass a background check, fine. Couldn’t hurt I guess (even if I personally feel confident enough in taking a ride based on the driver’s user ratings). However the Taxi companies are the ones who need the overhaul.
So your argument is that cabs should not be regulated? Or are you saying that some cabs should be regulated but others shouldn’t? Because, like it or not, Uber & Lyft are cabs.
Dictionary definition:
cab
chauffeur-driven automobile available for hire to carry passengers between any two points within a city or its suburbs for a fare determined by a meter or zone system or a flat rate.
Just to clarify:
I am not saying they should not be allowed to be in business. I am saying they should be subject to the same regulations as any other cab service.
But the misnomer of the “even playing field” argument is the expectation that these new services who operate on a wholly different operational model, somewhere between traditional taxis and passenger vehicles for hire, should be forced to fit into the outdated protectionist mold that has been shaped by years of corruption, creates significant barriers to entry for new players, and offers no tangible public safety or customer service benefit. Digital dispatch services shouldn’t be forced backward to fit the outdated regulatory model of taxis, if anything taxis should be forced to be brought into the future to fit the mold of digital dispatch services.
Most taxis ARE digitally dispatched and owned by the driver.
You are claiming that people who want to operate a cab without obeying the laws governing them should be able to if they want.
I can also see that you and I are never going to agree.
My argument is not that taxis should not be regulated, just that digital dispatch services have exposed the many shortcomings in the taxi system and now those can’t be ignored. Yeah yeah, the law’s the law, but when you’re faced with a clearly better system, do you punish it for having found a (probably temporary) loophole, or learn some lessons from it to apply to the whole industry?
DLP, I (as most Uber/Lyft/etc supporters) am not at all anti-regulation, I’m saying that the laws governing passenger vehicles for hire need to be completely reworked to reflect the reality of an industry that’s been radically altered by the internet revolution. It’s going to be tough for that to happen with policymakers who have no clue how these services actually function and who have been accepting campaign contributions from the taxi lobby for years in order to protect their stranglehold on the local market.