Seattle cabbies protest unlicensed competitors. Photo: Teamsters Local 117.
With a neon pink mustache and lots of social media hype, Lyft—an alternative to taxis—is revving up in cities across the country. When hip ads featuring smiling young people started popping up on every website I visited, it was clear they were targeting me.
Lyft, which calls itself “a peer-to-peer ridesharing platform,” is a smartphone app that allows users to request rides from other users who have cars. Money changes hands through a credit card entered into the app, and is considered a “donation” in states where the company doesn’t yet have legal permission to run the car service.
Taxi drivers are not happy with the new trend, and I can see why.
Lyft’s motto, “your friend with a car,” makes me think of happy neighbors hitching a ride together. They get to know each other, save money, and cut down on the environmental costs of driving—good news all around.
Lyft even blogs about new friendships formed in its “community” of pink-mustache-wearing vehicles and encourages users to fist-bump as they climb into the front seat.
But under these trappings, the model is nearly identical to taxis.
It starts with a passenger requesting a car. An independent driver registered with the app opts to take the gig. The driver goes to the requested location, picks up the passenger, and takes her where she wants to go. Then the driver heads out to wait for a new passenger. Sound familiar?
Taxi drivers, often considered independent contractors, are subject to heavy local regulations and fees for medallions, insurance, and licensing. Lyft claims exemption from all these—arguing that it’s an app, not a taxi service.
The many regulations on the taxi industry can be burdensome, but some exist for the common good. Licensed drivers are not, for instance, allowed to discriminate against potential passengers on the street, or change the price of a ride based on traffic, destination, or the time of day.
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Without these regulations and licensing fees, Lyft drivers can often afford to charge less leaving licensed taxi drivers at a disadvantage.
When Lyft hit the streets of Seattle in April, taxi drivers took action.
Members of the Western Washington Taxicab Operators Association, which operates in partnership with Teamsters Local 117, packed the streets, surrounding City Hall with honking taxis. A delegation of drivers went inside to demand a level playing field.
The Seattle city council will announce soon how it will deal with rideshare services. Taxi drivers are hoping it doesn’t follow a a recent precedent.
The California Public Utilities Commission cited Lyft in August 2012 for operating a transit service without proper licensing—but in September 2013 Lyft won state legislation authorizing its so-called “peer-to-peer transportation.”
The company’s blog hailed the victory as a “milestone that paved the way for our generation’s peer economy.”
Lucky us! In a rough economy, Lyft is offering me and my peers a hip new way to become taxi drivers without having to use the title, pay the fees, or meet the regulations. In the process, we get to undercut the low-wage workers, mostly immigrants, who depend on this work.
Less than two months after the California bill passed, Lyft announced its fares would shift from suggested donations to mandated minimum prices. With its new legal protection, it appears Lyft is comfortable in the role of unregulated taxi service, after all.
Lyft isn’t alone; like-minded start-ups like Uber and Sidecar are already springing up. And that means we can expect more licensed taxi drivers to take up the fight for survival.
It's so shortsighted of us to be fighting the peer-to-peer drivers. We should be organizing them!
The labor movement loses more support than it gains by fighting to save jobs that everyone can see are becoming obsolete. We could be winning better terms for the peer-to-peer drivers and passengers while fighting to ease the transition of medallion cabbies to the 21st century.
Uberx, Lyft and Sidecar are cutting corners with public safety and calling it innovation.
The reality is that for hire vehicles are on the road far more than private cars and have higher liabilties. Cab driving is one of the most dangerous occupations in the USA not only due to the risk of accidents but also from crime. Unless regulatory authorities mandate that for hire vehicles carry the expensive commercial liability and industrial compensation insurance, the cab operator nor the dispatch service(Uber) will not do it on their own.
That the unregulated "rideshare" operations are cutting corners can be seen in the New Year's eve fatality accident in San Francisco where an UberX driver ran over a family killing a six year old girl and hospitalizing the rest of the family.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/...
Uber's response was "We can confirm that the driver in question was a partner of Uber and that we have deactivated his Uber account. The driver was not providing services on the Uber system during the time of the accident." Stripped of the corporate double talk this means "Uber is not paying for this accident because the driver did not have our fare in his vehicle at the time. Go try and collect from the judgement proof cab driver".
The rub is that the UberX driver was operating with non-commercial insurance on his vehicle which excludes coverage for a business operation. This means that his private insurance will deny any claims from this accident. Uber claims to have a proprietary insurance plan that kicks in when the driver accepts a fare on his smartphone and ends when the driver hits the dropoff button. But outside these two digital events, the insurance coverage is supposed to revert back to the driver's plan which in this case and for most of these "rideshare" taxis means no coverage at all.
Uber brags that it checks the driver's insurance, driving record and criminal history. But it didn't catch the fatality accident driver's reckless driving conviction in Florida. It is also knew that this driver's non-commercial policy did not cover his UberX business. This is gross negligence on Uber's part. Hopefully a court will make Uber pay for this family's losses.
A week later a Lyft driver in San Francisco hit an elderly pedestrian. Again the Lyft vehicle was operating on private insurance. Lyft fired the driver. Not that it made any difference because the driver's insurance company cancelled the vehicle's policy and denied the claim. Lyft draws the line at driving with no insurance but invalid insurance is ok.
Here is the new friend with a car that a San Francisco pedestrian made with a Lyft driver. The pedestrian took a pic of the Lyft driver's car blocking a cross walk, disabled ramp and fire hydrant. The Lyft driver then savagely attacked the pedestrian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnJ_UtBjJRA
