I'm curious about how taxi drivers are viewed in the US or this specific region. In Turkey, they're mostly hated, because they will go to any length to extort money out of the customers. This ranges from picking longer roads if they detect that the customer doesn't know the area well to asking for 500 euros to even pick them up after terrorist attacks. So, Uber was seen as the savior as their drivers wouldn't try to do any of this and were generally nicer in people's experience (it really doesn't take much to be nicer than a taxi driver here).