Funny story: for a while in SF, the taxi union (?) was running ads that were thinly veiled attacks on Uber/Lyft. One of them showed a smiling taxi driver with the caption "would you rather have a driver who knows the city by heart or by GPS?" I found it particularly hilarious because the answer, for me at least, is GPS with live traffic information. Just another example of how out of touch the taxi companies are.

I uber to work everyday and 90% of the time the uber driver blindly follows GPS through an alley that isn't really meant for traffic, ignoring the much simpler and faster route that whatever GPS uber uses can't figure out.

But it's cheaper, cleaner, and will show up on demand. But the navigation of the driver is the big positive for cabs.

So wouldn't a driver knowledgable of the city streets that you don't ever have to give directions to be better?

I use Uber all the time but I find that regular taxi drivers are better in traffic as they tend to know ways around it the GPS doesn't provide. I also regularly get GPS focussed drivers taking 1 turn too early and driving in a circle to get back to where they started to make the correct turn (twice this week already). I still prefer Uber overall but dismissal of street knowledge because GPS is 'better/more accurate' doesn't gel with my experience at all.

Problem solved.

If you give me a clean car, reliability, and a driver who knows the city, I'd gladly get a taxi even if it's maybe 15 to 20% more.

Most of your data points are from a single route (your daily commute) and this may not be representative for all trips, even within your city.

I live in a city with significant variation in traffic patterns from day to day, and GPS with traffic info performs much better than someone who knows the roads.

It's just frustrating to see these drivers driving so distracted (I think they are more distracted before picking up a passanger)

(I reported it multiple times over the years)

But I could do public transit for around 2.50 each way. But adding about 15-20 minutes transit time.

What I really should do is bike to work. It's better for my health, wallet, and environment. I really have no excuse.

I estimate my Ubers this year will work out to around

($20/day for uber * ~60 winter work days) = $1200

Most people with modest vehicles will see a total cost of car ownership costing them somewhere in the $5-10k/year range. So I could double or triple my already heavy reliance on uber and come out ahead.

TLDR: For those with short commutes, a heavily uber-assisted bike commuting plan is a huge financial win. And this is not even considering the downstream value of the productivity and health benefits resulting from regular exercise. Or the value of the time I can now spend reading instead of driving.

If a person is willing to bike to work when it's dry in the morning (even if it might rain on the way home) there's probably only around 20 - 30 days when they'd need Uber, so that'd cut the Uber expenses by 1/3 to 1/2.

The point I was trying to illustrate for anyone reading is that uber is cheap, not expensive, when used to obviate the need for private vehicle ownership.

If you only care about cost in a big city there are likely less expensive options but if time is more valuable to you then cost isn't the big concern.

It would cost $60 - $80 for a one-way Uber trip from San Jose to SF, Caltrain would be around $16/day with a discounted 8-ride ticket, around $10.50 per day if you use a Caltrain monthly pass.

Even if you put 4 passengers in the car, it'd still cost you $35/day for Uber.

0:http://www.smh.com.au/national/my-cab-driver-fell-asleep-tax... (warning, autoplay video)

There's a particular brand of driving that feels like "Only barely keeping it together because of the GPS" that's a little uncomfortable.

A confident driver with some slick shortcuts can be a really fun experience.

It seems like Google might be getting slightly better now that they're pulling in Waze but I have seen little reason to believe that this is at all widespread.

So after 10 more minutes the driver finally finds me on a street corner and I enter the car - the GPS device (which would have guided him right to my doorstep) is installed but shut down and unused. I ask the driver why he didn't use the GPS, and he manages to tell me with a straight face that he doesn't need it because he knows all the streets in town.

I was literally left speechless for the entire ride.

Also they have to use the Uber GPS and not Google Maps, which several drivers have told me is quite inferior.

That doesn't work if you use the mobile site, m.uber.com, rather than the app. That site doesn't even offer the option to enter a destination.

(I use the mobile site because unlike the app, it doesn't ask for a pile of invasive permissions.)

> ...

> Any time you have humans entering data, you're bound to have problems like this

So no matter what there will be problems like this?

Now, if you don't know your own home address better than some random driver, then you have problems.

Drivers who use Waze (still a minority, it seems) tend to do much better.

A day or two later, I made the trek to the Yellow Cab offices in SF (which took time, Muni + a good walk). I then spent a long time waiting to be seen, only to be told that Yellow was “just a co-operative” that wasn’t liable; and, infuriatingly, they refused to give me the identity of the driver in question. I had wanted to file a police report naming the driver.

I never got my phone back — or an ounce of justice.

This is not a rare or freak incident, as anyone who has ridden taxis enough times can attest. I lost another pricey personal item three years earlier in an Austin cab, and was similarly left without recourse when the driver failed to acknowledge requests for its return.

It’s obvious the accountability that drivers have in any ride-sharing platform far outweigh the supposed criminal checks done by slimeball companies like Yellow Cab. If that same driver tried shit like that on Uber, not only would his rating drop, but he himself would be dropped because Uber itself would actually give a s--t when a customer reported this sort of incident! (And they wouldn't have to hike over to Uber HQ to do so!)

If I get into a cab, the driver asks where I am going, and I stump them by naming a major hotel, I personally feel like that was a frustrating failure, as now we are stuck in an intersection while I try to teach them the layout of a city I know less about than they do: the reason I am hiring a cab driver in the first place is because I want to outsource transportation, and the power that comes from being able to a street hail a cab to anywhere I want to go is tremendously useful.

The way I would describe the benefit is that "if I am using a cab it is generally because I don't know where I am or where I need to be". Imagine if you went to a restaurant, ordered a sandwich, and the waiter was like "ok, I can make that, but can you tell me what goes in it?" or hire a consultant to build some software for you and they say "ok, I can type that, but how do I build this?".

The real problem in San Francisco is that it was impossible to street hail. Your best strategy was typically to go to a nearby hotel and tip the valet to flag you a cab. Even then you were effectively screwed. And the dispatch at every cab company I have ever dealt with (except for Radio Cab in Portland) is a mess, and often they just lose track of fares.

What Uber and Lyft provided is just software that they could have sold to the cab companies to replace their dispatch, which would have solved these problems and worked in the existing ecosystem, but they wanted to take over the world and vertically integrate. I can see why, even if it frustrates me that we live in a world where that is even possible, as I do not see them as net forces for good :/.

You make this sound like there was a choice. Taxi companies are monopolistic entrenched bureaucracies. "Pay us money, run our software, and totally change the way your business operates" is just not going to happen.

Uber/Lyft did the only thing they could: an end-run around the taxi cartels.

Curb (app) tried to do this and it looks like cab companies aren't ready to let go of their control yet.

Recent immigrants have been through the US boarder enforcement regime. It isn't perfect, but it is something more than the average american goes through. So it is incorrect to say that being a recent immigrant renders any background check pointless.

Remember that is the US with the reputation for difficulties re background checks. Getting a definitive answer as to someone's convictions in 50+ different jurisdictions that make up the US is far more complicated than from a unified justice system as found in Pakistan, Canada or India. And given some of the gibberish I've seen from US agents, their english is far more comprehensible.

Some of those experiences include:

- very obviously driving me around the block after I asked to be dropped off at a particular location. The driver refused to let me out when I asked

- driver refused to drive me with a "I don't want to go that way"

- two drivers claimed their card machines didn't work and insisted on cash, the second tried it even after I asked before the ride if paying by card was okay

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-re...

[2] http://mic.com/articles/104524/if-you-care-about-women-delet...

[3] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d229801e-7707-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c...

I didn't follow that case closely, but according to that article that's a pretty gross mischaracterization of what happened, since the driver had "evaded Uber’s earlier security checks by providing a fake police reference letter."

You also imply a pretty explicit calculus ("well, some rapes will happen, but it's worth it") that I doubt occurred except in the sense that any taxi company would have to consider.

But maybe there's a better source?

edit: not to take away from your other points. I've had extremely mixed feelings about uber due to those incidents and others, balanced by how completely awful cab companies tend to be and uber's genuine good points.

> The new screening process will include requiring address verification, a local criminal court search and a national criminal database search

makes it sound like their previous background check did not include, "has this driver been convicted of sexual assault before?" This particular driver had indeed been previously found guilty of sexual assault, and Uber hired him without caring about that.

I've never had a job ask me if I've been convicted of sexual assault, and if anyone was going to be asked, you would think it would be someone with the last name Dildonics.

It's not quite as bad as, say, child care but requiring stricter background checks really doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation.

I use Uber for one simple reason: It's 30% cheaper than a cab. It isn't the quality of the cars, the personality of the drivers or the nature of the service. All of those things vary from case to case for every transportation service. Uber's only compelling feature is their lower price.

From what I understand, the average Uber driver makes very little money, < $9/hr after Uber's fees and vehicle maintenance costs. And the low customer prices are effectively being subsidized by venture capital money. How long can this last? Could this be another Groupon situation, where the Ponzi scheme doesn't fall apart until after Uber's IPO?

From Union Station in DC I take Uber, even though the cab line is way more convenient. It's about 40% cheaper accounting for no tip. Silicom Valley subsidizes my morning commute!

What I have had, not commonly but often enough that it no longer surprises me, is extremely racists statements about where I live (I'm a white south sider which seems to attract crazy talk). This has occurred in taxis, Uber & Lyft. I've even had Uber and taxi drivers (Lyft isn't immune, just small sample size) try to refuse to drive me home after picking me up. I've reported these incidents to either 311 or the respective apps. With the apps I have no idea of the effectiveness. With 311 I had a case number assigned and received an update months later when a driver lost their license over a racist incident.

If I really had any complaint about Uber & Lyft is that it seems to have driven the profit out of livery cars and really created a race to the bottom in that market. I used to much prefer private cars for most things, but now the difference isn't worth paying for except for prescheduled events.

All that said, I use taxis, Uber, Lyft & livery cars with some regularity, and my usage of them largely is based on convenience not quality of service. Taxis when I'm in the loop or some other busy spot, Uber/Lyft when I need an adhoc ride elsewhere, and private cars for scheduled rides.

I do regularly get cabs who say their card reader is down, at which point I just say "you are required to accept credit cards", and they always back down. I agree though that this is a reason to use Uber.

To balance the anecdotes: I once took a yellow cab to an NYC airport, and in the middle of the highway (didn't even pull off to a shoulder) the cab driver stopped his car because his English wasn't good enough to read the signs. He just kept asking me "left? right?" as cars blew past him at 45+ mph, honking their horns.

I wish yellow cabs had a rating system so I could've given that driver 1-star like I did the Uber driver.

Won't a cab driver make more during peak hours because he will have less down time between fares?

Of course it's just a problem with the GPS algorithms, but that sort of hyper-local knowledge seems to be really hard to encode in algorithms. I wonder how many GPS systems could pass "the knowledge" in london for example? I think we on HN tend to have too much faith in the superiority of software.

Me. Being stuck with a clueless uber driver when the GPS is misfiring for whatever reason is the worst.

I'm a frequent Lyft rider. One of my worst experiences recently was with a guy who spoke extremely broken English and who could barely understand English either. This wouldn't be so bad, but Apple Maps told him my house was someplace it wasn't (I didn't realize this was Apple Maps fucking up at the time; I've since begun texting drivers coming to my house telling them to not use Apple Maps), so I had to call him on the phone. It took a solid five minutes for him to understand that he's in the wrong location and needs to drive a few more blocks to find me, and he refused to exit his nav and look where I dropped the pin (I always take extra care to put the pin in the right spot). It took so long because his English was word salad, and he didn't understand basic words like "keep driving forward". Then, when he got to my place, I went to sit in the front (which I always do, and Lyft encourages), and as soon as I opened the door, he shouted at me "HEY, I'M UP HERE! GET IN BACK!" (the most coherent thing he said to me the whole time). Fortunately, the ride wasn't too far, so I just endured it and one-starred him when I got to my destination.

His rating was already at 4.5, which is below Lyft's termination threshold; I probably should've cancelled as soon as I saw it. Hopefully the one star I gave him was enough to get him kicked off the platform.

I've also had other bad experiences from drivers who act like their job is to milk their passengers:

- One guy also demanded I ride in the back. When I got in, I saw why: the inside door panels and the backs of the front seats were covered in advertising for his private driver service. If I knew then that was against the TOS, I would've had a nice chat with Trust & Safety.

- A driver took the wrong turn and got into an express toll lane on the freeway. Because of that, he missed the exit and we had to go on a long detour. He started ranting, saying "I'm trying trying to run a business here but people keep hitting me with all these tolls!". Also, this was another guy who made me ride in the back. Yeah, there's a pattern with these people. Because of that, making me ride in the back is now a guarantee you'll never get more than three stars from me (3-star or less means you're never matched with me again).

- A superstitious guy who refused to trust the voice nav... so to verify that the directions will indeed get us there, he started thumbing through the turn-by-turn directions with his face buried in the phone so he can't see the road, driving 20mph on the service road of a freeway. After the third time I told him to trust the nav and that I've taken Lyft from this place to that place dozens of times before, and he refused, I had him cancel the ride and let me out. I complained to Lyft and got my money back (because he charged me for the ride).

- Drivers, plural, who report that they've arrived before they actually get here. Dude, I can see your car coming down the street in the distance. You're not here yet.

- Driver who, on the way, pulled over at a gas station and texted me demanding I send him my destination address. When I told him I already entered it into the system, he cancelled the ride. My guess is he was going to cancel if the destination wasn't far enough away or maybe he was trying to redline me (the system only shows destination addresses once the driver reports they've arrived). Nothing of value was lost.

- Drivers who insist on parking a couple of blocks from my office building and then demanding I walk to their car instead of them driving up to my building. I'm not even on a busy city street... I work in the burbs! Also, the path from my office building to their car is always unlit, and it mostly happens when it's dark out. Sorry, but I'm a woman... I'm not walking through an unlit area at night to meet a driver who's exhibiting sketchy behavior. I'll just cancel and eat the fee. Bonus points to the guy who told me that I need to look at the Lyft map and walk to where his car is. He was laughing when he said it, too. Not my first bad experience with him: I cancelled on him once before after he was rude to me on the phone (and he has a very unique name I remembered). Since then, if I see his name come up, I immediately cancel. Guy is seriously creepy. He's not the only one who does this: maybe 5% of drivers who pick me up from work pull this, and they're all creepy guys who you can tell used to be cab drivers.

- One time I did walk the block or two over to the guy in a scenario like the above (one of the few times a driver pulled this when it was light out), he started ranting at me about how I kept him waiting for three minutes. When I said "I was expecting you to arrive where I actually was", he told me to get out of his car. As I was getting out, I told him I was complaining about him to Lyft, he said "I don't care, I work for myself", and then I walked back to my office building. As I was about to request a new ride, he drives over to me and physically chases me into the building. Luckily, I got in the elevator before he could. My boss called the police, they made sure he left (according to the police, he wanted to make sure I wouldn't do anything to hurt his reputation), and I then had a nice long chat with Trust & Safety.

There's a common thread here: people who think that they run private driver businesses and claim to just use Lyft as a tool are always the worst drivers.

Actually, 90% of drivers I deal with are perfectly pleasant. I just ride Lyft a lot, so I meet more drivers than the average person, and these experiences stick out in my mind.

The best thing you can do is give truthful ratings, and for really bad ones (or ones where you weren't able to rate them) complain to Uber/Lyft. They seem to care a lot more about their reputation than the cab companies ever did. After all, they don't have a monopoly.

I take it you don't actually live in a city