This isn't the case in the UK, it's always an estimate and I've had plenty of shitty drivers who don't know how to drive in London which have added 10 mins to a surge price journey because they've missed turnings, driven round in circles or taken the wrong bridge.
The local cab firm that exists only in my small home town has all these "innovations" too.
Maybe, in a way, Uber was a necessary evil. From following the discussions about it here for years now, I realize there are many places around the world where taxi situation is absolutely horrible. All of that created an opportunity for a bunch of evil assholes (and I'm not using these words lightly) with VC money to take over and earn money breaking laws, knowing in full that the locals will appreciate the increase in quality and decrease in price to the point of actually defending them from regulators.
In UK you either get a taxi which uses a calibrated tamper-proof taximeter and published rates per mile, or you use a cab which must offer the option of pre-agreed fee.
This dual system existed decades before Uber.
I'm pretty sure similar [0], and worse [1], is also happening on Uber/Lyft, just not to the same scale yet because of taxis services being far more established around the world.
But I don't see any reason why cab drivers would be any more criminal than ridesharing drivers. Unless ridesharing services do some extra deep background checking on their drivers, which I doubt is actually happening.
[0] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/h...
The use of apps to book rides makes it very easy to trace drivers if anything untoward happens.
Route tracking also makes it easy to reclaim if an indirect route is taken (I have successfully done this with Uber).
Route tracking could of course be implemented with traditional taxis, but at the moment is a reason why ride sharing is considered safer.
It was a he who got robbed by a she and it could only happen because he got drugged by the water she offered and then abused his trust-advance, towards ridesharing drivers, by asking to use his toilet.
Her getting caught on his surveillance cam, leaving the house only two hours later, probably did more leading to her arrest than her being an Uber driver instead of a Cab driver because the victim didn't remember a whole lot of anything after having been drugged.
> The use of apps to book rides makes it very easy to trace drivers if anything untoward happens.
Afaik taxis also keep logs about where they go, tho that might depend on the country we are talking about, just like the background check practices of any given ridesharing service.
But I don't see why regular taxi services couldn't do the background check that Uber supposedly does.
Tho I agree with your last two points, I still think the only real difference here is that criminals and scammers haven't fully adapted to these ridesharing services yet, but the potential is there none the less.
None of the above are impossible to have in regular cabs + app.
In fact tons of countries already have just that.
There is nothing about taxi definition that would exclude ubiquitous from it. There is nothing about taxi definition that would exclude companies with easy to use apps from it etc.
For instance: enough cities may not have preferred/dedicated public transport lane which makes significant costs based on waiting times, rather than distance: hence pre-agreed price is an estimate at best.
To me: Uber is a taxi company through and through and if there are local regulation Uber should not be able to circumvent them.
To add more advantages to the list: Full price transparency, pre-agreed price so you don't need to worry that you drive in circles, no driver searching for change for several minutes until you let him keep it.
And, like McDonald's did for fastfood, it creates a world wide standard for taxi services. I had a driver in India that took me to tourist stores instead of my destination and in Mexico City they warn you about taxi drivers robbing you - all not happening in an Uber.