Which is the stupidest fucking thing ever. There should just be a line of cars waiting to pick you up and you get in line and that car drives you to your destination. Aka a taxi stand, just with technology. Get in the car, the driver scans a QR code on your phone that was generated by you, telling the driver where to go. The reason we can't just do that is because taxi laws are stupid and Ubers are not a taxi so we're forced to play that stupid game because money and power, so we can't fix things. Arg.

taxi lobby f*ed up a golden opportunity there

That is exactly how it works at airports in India

> There should just be a line of cars waiting to pick you up and you get in line and that car ...

This one is not law. That absolutely exists ... but airports demand money for taxis to join that line of customers and so these got more expensive and are never the cheap option.

What’s missing from this is also the choice of the rideshare driver. Maybe they don’t want to take you 30 miles to your destination. Maybe your destination is in an area of no business so it’ll cost more for them to get back to a place they’ll find another fare.

The rideshare race to the bottom model of pricing has some bad aspects to it, but choice for the driver before accepting the trip is one positive.

Couldn't agree more. I'm wondering if this will be revisited once Waymos at airports become more commonplace.