Uber has no hope in this town

[sharkman]

This murderer was picking up fares between murders? Quite the multi tasker, I wonder if he also picked up some milk and eggs?

[Boges]

Not really an indictment of Uber drivers in general. But I'm sure some will make the comparison.

[The_Squid]

Toronto City Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker keeps saying in interviews that Uber is uninsured to carry passengers and that if there is an accident, you're not covered as a passenger. http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2683460482

The Uber website states that every Uber driver must have insurance and there is an additional $5M 3rd party liability insurance if the driver's insurance isn't enough coverage.

Is Uber lying? Is this city Councillor lying?

If De Baeremaeker is actually lying, Uber should sue him for defamation. Those were very strong words he used on national TV about Uber.

Edited February 22, 2016 by The_Squid

[Boges]

Toronto City Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker keeps saying in interviews that Uber is uninsured to carry passengers and that if there is an accident, you're not covered as a passenger. http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2683460482

The Uber website states that every Uber driver must have insurance and there is an additional $5M 3rd party liability insurance if the driver's insurance isn't enough coverage.

Is Uber lying? Is this city Councillor lying?

If De Baeremaeker is actually lying, Uber should sue him for defamation. Those were very strong words he used on national TV about Uber.

It's a grey area because Uber drivers don't have commercial driver insurance.

But would Uber just leave a driver and any victim of an accident high and dry should an accident happen?

I don't have any examples of an Uber customer sustaining serious injuries and not being covered by either the driver's insurance company or Uber itself.

It seems these are hypothetical arguments.

[overthere]

Toronto City Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker keeps saying in interviews that Uber is uninsured to carry passengers and that if there is an accident, you're not covered as a passenger. http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2683460482

The Uber website states that every Uber driver must have insurance and there is an additional $5M 3rd party liability insurance if the driver's insurance isn't enough coverage.

Is Uber lying? Is this city Councillor lying?

If De Baeremaeker is actually lying, Uber should sue him for defamation. Those were very strong words he used on national TV about Uber.

Uber is lying and knows they are lying. A drivers personal policy simply is not valid. You cannot carry passengers for money on a personal policy. Period.

Aviva was supposed to be coming out with an insurance product in Ontario and Alberta for Uber drivers very soon, has it happened?.

But Ubers 'group policy' is toilet paper.

This issue is at the heart of Ubers competitivenes and business model. If their part timers have to pay a few grand extra for insurance to drive, they cannot and won't.

[The_Squid]

It seems these are hypothetical arguments.

It's not hypothetical at all. Either they have insurance or they don't.

Apparently, they don't.

It's a bad idea to let them operate without the proper insurance. They should certainly be banned from operating until they get their shit together.

[Boges]

It's not hypothetical at all. Either they have insurance or they don't.

Apparently, they don't.

It's a bad idea to let them operate without the proper insurance. They should certainly be banned from operating until they get their shit together.

Without strict enforcement, how can they stop it?

People generally like the Uber experience better than cabs, so there's a market. Ask the war on drugs how's banning things that are popular works.

[The_Squid]

Without strict enforcement, how can they stop it?

People generally like the Uber experience better than cabs, so there's a market. Ask the war on drugs how's banning things that are popular works.

Comparing it with the drug war is just silly.

How do we enforce anything? With spot checks and large fines.

[TimG]

Without strict enforcement, how can they stop it?

Penalties against corporations like Uber that fail to ensure their contractors have coverage.

[Boges]

Comparing it with the drug war is just silly.

How do we enforce anything? With spot checks and large fines.

So random spot checks for Uber? That would be a huge waste of police resources.

Also unless a cop orders the car, you can't prove the ride is an Uber ride.

Also Uber says they'll pay any fines.

[TimG]

Also Uber says they'll pay any fines.

The fines have to be large enough to ensure that they provide an incentive to be proactive (eg $1 million per incident). With large fines the only checks required are when uber cars are pulled over for other reasons. Edited February 23, 2016 by TimG

[eyeball]

Uber is lying and knows they are lying. A drivers personal policy simply is not valid. You cannot carry passengers for money on a personal policy. Period.

Aviva was supposed to be coming out with an insurance product in Ontario and Alberta for Uber drivers very soon, has it happened?.

But Ubers 'group policy' is toilet paper.

This issue is at the heart of Ubers competitivenes and business model. If their part timers have to pay a few grand extra for insurance to drive, they cannot and won't.

You don't need passenger insurance to share a ride. In any case I doubt a couple thousand dollar insurance bill will deter anyone.

Taxi drivers shell out that plus thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars to lease a licence from some lazy greedy licence holder. That's the real issue here, the licence to print money that governments in their stupidity allowed to grow in value beyond the point of ridiculousness.

Why taxi-drivers don't tell these blood-suckers to go pee up a rope and get with the program is beyond me.

I can certainly see why the relatively small number of actual owner-operators would be nervous about holding onto a now potentially worthless piece of paper which is why governments should buy back the licences it was responsible for creating. I suppose if governments wants to claim lobbyists made them do it we'll cross that bride when we get there.

Edited February 23, 2016 by eyeball

[Boges]

The fines have to be large enough to ensure that they provide an incentive to be proactive (eg $1 million per incident). With large fines the only checks required are when uber cars are pulled over for other reasons.

Why not make is a billion dollar fine? Like really, we won't see governments doing that.

We've seen that Uber will cease operations in cities that raise a big enough stink if it's not worth their time though. But if the potential market is big enough they'll try harder to "make it work".

And I know insurance is a problem, but it's not the reason municipal governments are upset. As eyeball, and many have said in this thread, this is about municipal governments using taxi licenses as commodities and enriching middle men that only owned a plate.

[eyeball]

At the moment this issue is just about the most graphic example of how economic playing fields become so tilted against ordinary people.

The single biggest mistake of government was not attaching or maintaning an owner-operator clause on a licence or at the very least setting a limit on how many licences one individual can own.

Opportunity, when it's so directly controlled by a government is the slipperiest slope there is towards the abyss known as the income gap. You can bet licence holders lobby furiously to maintain if not expand the status quo. Lobbying for more is the best investment they can make with their profits.

And yes, as I've said before this is how it's done in the fishing industry too. Last time I fished I was paid .15 a lb and the quota owner received $3.85.

I'm trying to imagine how UBER fishing could get around this...perhaps the consumer buys a sport licence and then I go catch the fish for him. I could wear an HD camera on my head so the consumer could watch me catch his fish and enjoy a sport-like experience. If I could sign up a couple of hundred guests on my fish app I could make a decent living providing good natural healthy food to consumers at a considerable saving once we cut out the greedy middle-men and the governments that protect them.

Edited February 23, 2016 by eyeball

[overthere]

Uber is currently shut down in Edmonton over licensing issues. Like, they don't have any and have suspended their campaign of BS and outright lies in pretending they ever did have insurance.

They will be back in business in July when it is expected the AB govt will have approved new insurance products for 'ridesharing', or taxis by the correct name. It will be interesting to see just how competitive they are when they aren't endangering their clients every trip..

In the meantime, a new company called Tappcar is on the streets. They have Class 4 licenses and commercial, public carrier insurance, and have an app based dispatch similar to Uber.

I look forward to some serious competition.

[eyeball]

I look forward to some serious competition.

And yet you don't seem to appreciate why you can attribute that to Uber and it's biggest unsung accomplishment. Toronto taxi licence prices are plummeting. The days of conventional taxi licences and drivers having to fork over most of their revenues to some licence mafia are coming to an end.

My heart goes out to bonafide owner operators who only seem to make up about a third or less of the taxi industry. I think the municipalities that created the special licence tabs and then did nothing to check the inflation of their value and the corruption of their industry should be forced to buy these licences back, at least from the bonafide drivers.

This guy on the other hand should be told to go pee up a rope.

Among the key players was Mitch Grossman, a businessman whose family had collected more than 100 plates. These plates gave Grossman a pharaoh’s power.

If a driver wanted to use one of his family’s plates, Grossman could force him to buy an overpriced car from his sales operation, finance it through a family firm called Symposium Finance (where rates reached 28 per cent) then join Royal Taxi, the Grossman family’s taxi brokerage.

To get around the municipal bylaw against plate leasing, Grossman forced the driver to put the car he had just purchased in the name of one Grossman’s companies, so the names on the plate and the car matched. Not one of the licenses held by Grossman and his family were in their own names. Instead, they were held by companies, most of them numbered. (By doing more than 1,500 corporate searches we determined who was actually behind Toronto’s taxi licenses.)

Story

Ironically, the original intent of licences was to protect drivers from the pre-licenced era from so many new drivers entering the industry and diluting everyone's earning potential. Licences, issued on the basis of a proven history and record in the industry, were then traditionally passed from father to son/daughter or could be sold upon retirement for whatever the market value was. I think most people would have supported maintaining this original and reasonable licencing model but it was blown out of the water by the lack of owner-operator clauses in the terms and conditions of the licences. You can be pretty sure policy makers who create licences are lobbied to do this or look the other way when rules are sidestepped by the sorts of characters outlined in the G&M story I cited.

This is probably how it's been in cities and other jurisdictions around the planet for decades and I suspect there are many many other industries with similarly rotten cores that are just waiting for an Uber-like revolution to shake them back into reality.

We should all look forward to that day.

Edited March 21, 2016 by eyeball

[Cruze]

UBER HAS HOPE IN EVERY TOWN UNLESS YOUR A DINOSAUR!!!!!!!!

Uber is more tech savy,does not have the overhead and is more in touch with the youth.

The bigger picture here is that most UBER drivers only get 12 to 20 hours a week.

Can't make a living on those hours.

So are we moving towards a society of minimal hours and less take home pay to suffice faster services and

more effecincy.

What's next a freekin robotic car !!

How do you live and pay bills when you have less hours and less income ?

So is a guranteed income for all the answer,perhaps 20,000 a year basic ?

[Boges]

Uber has been legitimized by Toronto city council.

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2016/05/03/toronto-city-council-debates-uber-rules.html

Among the measures approved by council:

• Allow private transportation companies (PTCs) like Uber to operate in Toronto, booked only through a smartphone app, with a $3.25 minimum fare, no maximum fares and “surge” peak-time pricing.
• Allow taxis to adopt “surge” peak-time pricing for rides booked via smartphone app, and to discount pricing as long as drivers aren't forced to pay the cost of the discount.
• Maintain requirements for taxis to have cameras, and flashing emergency lights, but not for PTCs. Have city staff report back next year on whether PTCs need cameras.
• Ensure PTCs and taxis have insurance of at least $2 million on all drivers for bodily injury, death and damages to people or property.
• Undo 2014 reforms that would have phased out ownership of “standard” plates as a commodity and ensure all cabs be disabled-accessible by 2024.

Uber Canada general manager Ian Black said the company can live by the new rules.

“We're certainly pleased. This is a great day for the riders in the city of Toronto, a great day for drivers as well using the Uber platform,” Black said after the vote. He singled out Tory's leadership, “for shepherding this issue through council to a big step forward today.”

[SpankyMcFarland]

On 2016-02-22 at 8:33 PM, The_Squid said:

It's not hypothetical at all. Either they have insurance or they don't.

Apparently, they don't.

It's a bad idea to let them operate without the proper insurance. They should certainly be banned from operating until they get their shit together.

Uber sounds dodgy to me but have any injured passengers not been covered? My experience of insurance companies is that they will try to weasel out of everything they can so it should be possible to find injured passengers who have been turned down if this claim is true. Do such people exist? 

Edited June 7, 2017 by SpankyMcFarland

[Boges]

13 hours ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

Uber sounds dodgy to me but have any injured passengers not been covered? My experience of insurance companies is that they will try to weasel out of everything they can so it should be possible to find injured passengers who have been turned down if this claim is true. Do such people exist? 

You'd think the news would be covered with such stories. 

I don't really know anyone who opts for a cab over Uber when Uber is available. Regardless of Price, the fact that it's cashless, tipless and you don't actually have to call anyone makes it better than any Taxi service.