The article does not compare or contrast the rates to other industries, situations or just living life in general. My comment is not to absolve Uber, but rather point out that the article does not do a good job at proving that Uber is any more dangerous than a variety of other places/activities/things.
Just take a cursory look at the front page, and see how much of it is hard, actual news. Even in the Business section, you'll find words like "cult-like" and "drowning in debt". It's very difficult to believe that this is a newspaper of record.
Uber is certainly not capable of dishing out the kind of punishment these scumbags deserve, nor is it capable of providing due process to defendants.
Uber's entire business model is, essentially, supplying unlicensed taxi services. I am honestly surprised it works as well as it does.
If anything, I would feel safer in an Uber than a taxi because there's a clear record of who is in that car.
At some level, they are attempting to avoid bad press, but their methods go far beyond "Washing our hands of it, not my problem" and into "Trying to obfuscate and cover up crimes so that we can't be tied to them".
Source: Worked at Uber for about six months and quit in disgust.
None of this is to exonerate the NYT for their biased reporting, because the crime rates in conventional taxes are almost as bad, and closure rates are worse. It's an ugly industry that Uber could have cleaned up but decided the pragmatic approach was to spin doctor.
Hold on. In the previous message you didn't mentioned "customer's request". You explicitly stated "customer's consent". This is different. "Customer's consent" means law enforcement demands access third party data without a warrant and asked customers to allow law enforcement to access data related to them. "Customer's request" is entirely different. It means it is the customer who is actively seeking their own information. They are not the same thing.
This switch is odd because last time I requested an Uber I firmly believe they show the driver's identification, car licensing plates, and share positioning and route with the customer. I just peeked into my Uber app and I have ride details that go back up to two years, which include the driver's name. From a layman's point of view, this is clearly enough data to get police to build up a case and put together a warrant. Why would law enforcement try to gather data on riders and drivers without the collaboration of riders?
Care to explain what exactly is missing?
But if they are obstructing beyond that I would think they would be asking for a lawsuit.
In theory. I can't speak about Uber; but, with Lyft, I've seen husbands driving instead of their wife (and vice versa). According to some drivers, this is not uncommon. I had one driver who's name, according to the app, was "Google."
I've also had a number of drivers tell me that many riders don't have their picture on their account.
They make the driver fill some information in an online form and occasionally send an image that is supposed to be a selfie. Certainly in my account I can see a record of what various people who drove me claimed were their names, but that's not really the same thing as identifying them.
mitchbob•6mo ago