Re:App-Powered Car Service Leaves Cabs in the Dust
by kragen on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @01:57PM
(#2411973)
Fixed cab fares are a response to passengers' effective inability to negotiate cab fares. In general, while transport regulations benefit the incumbents to some degree by raising the barrier to entry (rather shockingly in the case of NYC taxi medallions), they are generally supported by the public for reasons of safety.
There hasn't actually been a "broad increase in crime over the past fifty years" in the US; consider http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nccrimn.htm which shows that, in North Carolina, violent crime in general has nearly doubled over that time, and robbery has increased by a factor of six, but murder rates have halved. A similar trend is seen in San Diego http://www.sandiego.gov/police/stats/ — violent crime has quadrupled, robbery has barely doubled, and murder has halved. Furthermore, these overall trends have been far from monotonic; the crime peak in 1990–1992 is far worse than anything we've seen over the last 20 years.
And there are lots of countries where low-tech hitchhiking is very much alive, and crime is much higher in most of them than in the US.
I think the real reason for the change is economic: as people in the US got much richer, they preferred the safety of private cars, airplanes, and other public transport, to the cost savings of hitchhiking.
Regardless, that's a problem of information. You want to know if the person you're riding with has a record of trying to rob or rape previous drivers or passengers, or even leering at their tits.
There hasn't actually been a "broad increase in crime over the past fifty years" in the US; consider http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nccrimn.htm which shows that, in North Carolina, violent crime in general has nearly doubled over that time, and robbery has increased by a factor of six, but murder rates have halved. A similar trend is seen in San Diego http://www.sandiego.gov/police/stats/ — violent crime has quadrupled, robbery has barely doubled, and murder has halved. Furthermore, these overall trends have been far from monotonic; the crime peak in 1990–1992 is far worse than anything we've seen over the last 20 years.
And there are lots of countries where low-tech hitchhiking is very much alive, and crime is much higher in most of them than in the US.
I think the real reason for the change is economic: as people in the US got much richer, they preferred the safety of private cars, airplanes, and other public transport, to the cost savings of hitchhiking.
Regardless, that's a problem of information. You want to know if the person you're riding with has a record of trying to rob or rape previous drivers or passengers, or even leering at their tits.