Virginia orders Uber, Lyft to stop operating in state

http://wtop.com/120/3636415/Va-orders-Uber-Lyft-to-stop-operating

by leephillips • 12 years ago

64 57 12 years ago

Haul4ss• 12 years ago

Rent seeking, baby! Gotta protect the entrenched interests.

tswartz2• 12 years ago

> the DMV urged riders to make informed choices about which transportation services they use. The DMV says riders should check that cars have seatbelts, current license plate and inspection stickers.

Amazed at the reasons they point to in an attempt to justify their actions. In all my encounters with Lyft and Uber the cars conditions are well above a taxi. A typical taxi ride includes squealing brakes and bottoming out due to suspension falling apart.

thenmar2• 12 years ago

Not that I disagree, but it's not like you'd notice if a car hadn't been inspected for years and had a non-functioning airbag. At least not until you needed it.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

You would in Virginia, since yearly inspections are required and the sticker is displayed prominently in the windshield.

tswartz2• 12 years ago

That is certainly a good point. Now, I'm curious how often and comprehensive a taxi inspection really is.

enraged_camel• 12 years ago

Yes, but run-down cars with squealing brakes and bad suspensions are much more likely to also not have a functioning airbag.

Xorlev• 12 years ago

Can't compete? Lobby.

pdq4• 12 years ago

It's pretty ridiculous that car-pooling (aka ride-sharing) is fully legal and unrestricted.

However, the second you charge money for the same service, the regulators want to get involved to check for safety, inspections, and licensing.

calbear81• 12 years ago

Yes, a commercial relationship changes the nature of that transaction since commercial transactions are regulated/taxed in many states.

pdq4• 12 years ago

You're missing the point. If the grounds are that ethically paying customers should have taxis licensed, why do those ethics not apply also to donated services, like car-pooling?

tmoullet• 12 years ago

There are a number of things (sex, homebrew, tax prep, massage, fishing, etc.) become regulated/illegal as soon as you start charging for them.

zhng• 12 years ago

sex - not if you film it. then it's instantly legal

tlrobinson• 12 years ago

I wonder if you could circumvent these issues by making it donation only, but show riders' donation history to drivers before they choose to accept a rider. The donation is "optional" but unless you want to be effectively blacklisted (by individual drivers, not Uber/Lyft) you should leave a donation.

I'm sure the taxi lobby would figure out a way to shut that down as well, of course.

erohead• 12 years ago

I think this is how lyft started out.

ulfw2• 12 years ago

It's pretty ridiculous that having sex (aka one night stands) is fully legal and unrestricted.

However, the second you charge money for the same service, the regulators want to get involved to check for safety, inspections, and licensing.

pdq4• 12 years ago

As mentioned below, not if there's a camera involved. Then both parties are "actors", and the service is legal.

john_b• 12 years ago

""I urge the citizens of Virginia to protect their families by using only companies that appear on DMV's website as licensed transportation services. If it's not on the list, it's not recommended," says DMV Commissioner Richard Holcomb."

"Save the children!" plus an appeal to authority. If your argument has no substance, you might as well go full fallacy.

tzs• 12 years ago

Appeal to authority is only a fallacy when misused.

seacious• 12 years ago

Very nearly all of modern science is based on appeals to authority. I don't have the training or time to validate even 1/10'000th of the things that a modern 'scientific' person is supposed to believe.

lectrick• 12 years ago

The biggest startup challenge seems to be to deal with existing laws (and people, and relationships) that never imagined your brand new idea. The technological challenge seems secondary.

trhway• 12 years ago

"As many of the current regulations surrounding taxis and limos were created before anything like Lyft's peer-to-peer model was ever imagined

it wasn't that the peer-to-peer model wasn't imagined, it just that the "peer-to-peer" transportation services have been illegal pretty much everywhere. What was changed by Lyft and the likes is the number of "law-breakers", i.e. it seems it reached critical threshold for [considering] regulations change. Laws/regulations is just a written record of the power balance, and as the balance has just somewhat shifted it thus prompted the changes in the written record of it.

DigitalSea• 12 years ago

Won't somebody please think of the children and the broken taxi industry! Before Uber and Lyft hit the scene, you only had a small pool to pick your taxi from only to discover all major taxi companies are in cahoots together anyway.

Uber to me is reliable, it's cheaper and it's safer. I couldn't count the number of times I've ordered a taxi that just didn't show up (presumably they took a more profitable fare elsewhere), rude drivers, drivers that speed without any kind of accountability. You complain to the taxi company and they couldn't really care less.

Instead of embracing change, taxi companies are clinging to their lobbyist and broken ways. Look how well that turned out for the music industry when they tried to fight digital music and streaming... It's the same situation happening all over again. Uber and Lyft will eventually win, it's only a matter of time.

SDGT• 12 years ago

Agree, it's like life is a constant game of "maintain the status quo", and we measure innovation by how pissed people get that had already invested in said status quo.

I just called Time Warner yesterday to complain until they gave me better pricing and ended up arguing with the retention guy about how it would cost them less if they just killed their analog output (which still runs in my area) and gave internet users the BW. TWC is finally doing so in the area, but not after milking every last drop out of the aging analog cable crowd.

You complain to the taxi company and they could care less

...twitch...

couldn't care less

droopyEyelids• 12 years ago

There are many different municipalities with many different qualities of taxi service.

And there are many different laws affecting who can operate taxi services in those areas.

I don't know how things were in Virginia, but in Chicago regular taxis are vastly better than uberx/lyft in every way except price. Also, taxi drivers are required to have a chauffeur's license that tests them for TB along with city knowledge.

Uber works well for you and many of us. But don't portray this as a hero's fight against a broken industry when in reality it's a nuanced decision and there are valid points of view on both sides of the argument.

andymcsherry• 12 years ago

I've used both Uber and the local taxi service in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Columbus, OH. I can tell you that Uber is vastly superior in every way. The cars are cleaner and newer, the drivers are friendlier, the service is cheaper, getting a ride is easier, and with Uber I don't need to deal with the inevitable argument about why I'm trying to pay with a credit card instead of cash.

astrange• 12 years ago

Your taxi drivers are tested for tuberculosis?

In SF bay the traditional taxi drivers are great at just not bothering to come, and the dispatchers will yell at you and make you call back if you happen to call the wrong city's number for the same company. Then they practically threaten you if you try to pay with a card.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

I don't know about Lyft, but the situation with Uber in the DC area is the opposite of what you describe: taxis are cheaper but substantially worse.

hashtags• 12 years ago

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice- you may know that your society is doomed.

-Francisco D'Anconia

ortuna• 12 years ago

These "licensed" services get out of hand where allowed number of licenses are far lower than demand. This turns into a huge mess as a recent but less publicized account shows: http://www.fbi.gov/washingtondc/press-releases/2013/former-g...

Nursie• 12 years ago

I'm sorry, I know there's a religion of disruption going on around these parts, and I know that there's disdain for established business, and regulations that seem to keep new players out of the market, and unnecessary bureaucracy and all of these things...

But sometimes, just sometimes some of the regulations and restrictions are legitimate consumer protection mechanisms that benefit all of us, and we should think before we throw them out in the name of progress.

zibit4• 12 years ago

Sometimes, but not this time

potatolicious3• 12 years ago

Agreed. There is a nuance to this that is frequently forgotten in tech circles, where the government is pure evil and unrestricted free enterprise is the definition of what is right and good.

That said, it's too bad that the two sides represent the extremes and there is no entity representing the sane middle ground. On the one hand you have an entrenched industry resistant to any form of change (and not willing to abuse politics to do this), on the other hand you have companies that laugh in the face of decades of learned consumer experience and have a history of abusing the market to push out competitors (see: Uber and the call-and-cancel-against-competitors debacle).

I'm for more taxis on roads. I'm for more technology in taxis. I'm for transparent payments and real enforcement against bad drivers (and bad passengers!). I'm also for proper licensing, proper insurance, consumer protections (e.g., being kicked out of a cab for a surge pricing fare), and trustworthy metering.

I suspect most people are in this middle ground, but no one represents us. I don't want Uber to the arbiter what goes forward, and I don't want the taxi lobby either. Both scenarios are distinctly dystopian.

kyrra• 12 years ago

The issue most cities and states are running into is that the laws that protect the current cab industry are making it near impossible for more cabs to be added. There are years long waiting lines for new licenses because they give out so few. And in those cities there are long waits to get a cab.

Uber and Lyft are able to get traction because the government is being too slow to meet the demands people have within their cities/states. Regulation is good for consumer protection, but when it's preventing services to reach consumers, there is a problem. These companies are willing to go around the laws cause the government is not doing their job.

fdas34532• 12 years ago

"you have companies that laugh in the face of decades of learned consumer experience and have a history of abusing the market to push out competitors"

Oh yes. The taxi commission isn't pushing out competitors whatsoever with bans on Uber/Lyft. You're completely right.

JPKab2• 12 years ago

Virginian here. I'm currently on business in Texas. On Friday morning, I had an Uber car pick me up at 4AM to take me to the airport. He showed up in 3 minutes, was courteous, safe, and fast.

The last time I tried to call a taxi (the night before) to get me to the airport, the driver never showed up. So I ended up walking to the train station, luggage in hand, to get to DCA.

I'll be flying in to DCA tomorrow, and I won't be able to call an Uber. I'll have to go get in a dingy, unsafe taxi with some asshole who is almost always driving while taking on the phone.

If the regulations actually worked (I felt safe in taxi cabs, the drivers weren't pieces of shit chewing khat and refusing to turn on the AC, and constantly overcharging you every chance they get by taking longer routes that any local knows are not the quickest way) then maybe I would feel good about it.

But guess what? Technology is crowdsourcing regulation now. We don't need a top down body of lazy fucks who sluggishly work their 9-3 shifts (with 2 hour lunch breaks) going around making sure taxis don't overcharge or are safe. If an Uber driver gets less than stellar feedback, they are gone. I'd call that much better than a fucking bureaucrat. The results speak for themselves. Uber is safer, cleaner, and superior to a taxicab in every way.

When I fly back to Virginia tomorrow, I'll have my wife pick me up. I'm not getting in a goddammed taxicab ever again unless I have absolutely no choice.

bps4484• 12 years ago

If your point is going to be valid (that sometimes regulations are legitimate protections) you must come with facts. Specifically:

1. What are the protections that the regulations give? 2. Are the actually successful? At uber and lyft's scale, we should be able to see how not having these regulations fail the consumer. Are there more accidents? No seatbelts? Longer drives? Overcharging? Kidnappings/rapes/murders (this is not said in jest, I believe it is sometimes listed as a reason for needing regulation)?

curiousAl• 12 years ago

It's not about disruption so much as it is about choice.

Taxis should not be some ultra-regulated industry, and if it is, it shouldn't be near IMPOSSIBLE (read: ultra-expensive) to be part of that regulated sector.

Nowadays, it's a service as basic as being a barista or a dog walker, the dangers imposed on society by having Uber/Lyft drivers pick up willing, paying customers are microscope to naught. (State/County/City) Sanctioned Taxi drivers aren't some elite demographic for honesty and morals.

If it's an insurance thing, (reasonably) legislate it, but until then, don't stop consumers from using a service that they are clearly overwhelmingly pleased with .

HelloMcFly• 12 years ago

I agree, but I don't see that being the case as often with anti-rideshare efforts as I do with anti-Airbnb efforts. Perhaps my own biases are at play. Where do you see the need for regulations and restrictions of rideshare services that benefit the consumer? In Seattle they made it sound like it was about consumer protectionism, but it ended up looking a lot more like the city protecting a business model while paying lip-service to safety.

I want to regulate on safety and general welfare, not on choice.

rtpg2• 12 years ago

To expand on this point: I think that most people agree that some sort of vetting process is good (would you get into a complete stranger's car?) Uber and the like seem to have good ways of holding on to good drivers: the feedback loop is in place and seems to work. The safety problem seems to solve itself

With airbnb the problem becomes more complicated because service users can also cause problems (moreso than in most things). But by the nature of the service there are two issues:

- service providers (the subleters ) might not be around to give good feedback

- neighbors are likely not giving feedback

There's no good quality control on the people staying in the house and neighbors suffer.

fdas34532• 12 years ago

Freedom of choice*

*except when choosing your own taxi

zibit4• 12 years ago

"consumer protection mechanisms that benefit all of us"

If it's all about consumer protection why doesn't the Virginia DMV do something about all the sluglines throughout Virginia and DC. Sluglines are the practice of one stranger giving one or more other strangers a ride so that the car can get on the HOV.

Are those slugline cars safe? Are the drivers safe? Have they received proper training?

Maybe, maybe not. But they don't disrupt the powers that be

Here's a Virginia DMV page with a link to a slugline page:

http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/hov-rulesfaq.asp

zibit4• 12 years ago

Folks at Uber, how best should I protest this?

logn• 12 years ago

I don't get people's sentiment. We should either follow laws or change them. Simply deciding we don't enforce certain laws or reinterpreting according to various interests leads to worse situations. If Uber and Lyft want to break the law, ok, but how can you blame the DMV for enforcing it?

zibit4• 12 years ago

Let me give all the non Virginians a quick glimpse into how unfair this is. DC has a thing called slug lines. Traffic is so bad here that drivers will offer strangers a ride so they can get on the HOV lanes. Lots of people do this. There are lines all over DC and Virginia of people doing this.

Does the Virginia DMV say anything about slug lines and how unsafe they may be? Or how the drivers may or may not have training? Or how the cars may not have been properly inspected?

NO, in fact they encourage it (see below)

Why? cause it doesn't disrupt the powers that be

They actually link to slug lines - again a popular practice of allowing strangers into the car of another stranger - on this page:

http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/hov-rulesfaq.asp

JPKab2• 12 years ago

See my comment in this thread about me Ubering to DCA on Friday, and now when I get back in tomorrow I won't have it.

But just want to point out: Because nobody is being paid in slug lines, they couldn't tell people not to do it even if they wanted to.

You make an excellent point about how they claim to care about safety and then tell people to go use slug lines.

For a good laugh, go look at the slug line horror stories. My favorite is a guy who got in a car with a woman who was pulled over minutes later with a suspended license and warrants. She was carted off to jail, and the police officers gave him a ride to a strip mall where he had to call a taxi.

ddp• 12 years ago

Should we shave off a Billion now?

Virginia orders Uber, Lyft to stop operating in state

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