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Sorry if I missed someone else posting this link, but this NPR story sheds a lot of light on the topic of “who are Uber’s drivers and what kind of scrilla are they raking in?”
Some are good guys, all doing a dirty job. Earlier this year my GF left her phone (Iphone 5c) in a cab. Called the driver, he came back, returned the phone. I offered him 200 for his trouble and to reward his honesty. He absolutely refused to take it. And he seemed to have all his front teeth 🙂
A ton of Uber drivers in Chengdu are ex-taxi drivers. They get a car, quit, and often make 4x as much money while working for themselves while making new friends at the same time.
That’s interesting. I have only used uber a hand full of times, all have been young part time drivers so far.
Eventually it will be illegal to drive a car on the road purely because of safety reasons
Most of my driving experience is from europe and china. I can see driverless cars working in cities and motorways in developed areas. However a lot of driving is still country lanes and dust tracks with no traffic lights or road markings. This makes implementing driverless cars very difficult. You then have to factor in different regulations between countries in europe. Left hand drive cars operating in right hand drive countries and visa versa. We have a long long way to go, and a lot of obstacles to overcome and infastructute to build to get there.
Some are good guys, all doing a dirty job. Earlier this year my GF left her phone (Iphone 5c) in a cab. Called the driver, he came back, returned the phone. I offered him 200 for his trouble and to reward his honesty. He absolutely refused to take it. And he seemed to have all his front teeth
That’s awesome to hear. I had the same situation with a taxi driver about 5 years ago, I stupidly left like $1,000 in DJ equipment in the trunk. He returned with a television crew to where he dropped me off, at 3am, and also refused to take money that I insisted on giving him.
Most of my driving experience is from europe and china. I can see driverless cars working in cities and motorways in developed areas. However a lot of driving is still country lanes and dust tracks with no traffic lights or road markings. This makes implementing driverless cars very difficult. You then have to factor in different regulations between countries in europe. Left hand drive cars operating in right hand drive countries and visa versa. We have a long long way to go, and a lot of obstacles to overcome and infastructute to build to get there.
Yes, these are good points. I think those rural drivers might be the last to go. In the future, those people will be fewer because the entire world has been gradually moving away from rural areas and into urban areas over the last century. By 2050 another 2.5 billion people will be in urban areas. It is certainly a process, and there are many obstacles. But right now you can see in places like NYC, SF, DC: it really makes almost no sense to live there and own a car at all, and that is a new development from the last five years which Uber has cemented. Those cities themselves are extremely bogged down by all the car traffic, the majority of which are people who insist on owning and driving their own car.
edit: This article is getting shared a lot right now, on the topic of Uber driver wages: I was an undercover Uber driver. This is about the states so a direct comparison with somewhere like China isn’t easy, but the point is: Uber moves into new territories with super low prices for passengers and great wages for drivers. When it catches on, they lower prices and wages for drivers, which brings in second and third waves of drivers, often people who are coming from driving taxis. Right now Chengdu is clearly in the early honeymoon”phase with Uber where everybody is winning.
Dan just published a good post about the societal effects that Uber has had after doing a lot of research: What Uber Means to Chengdu: More Than Money
Johnny 5,
I think I did not succeed to put my point straight.
I am not saying Uber is a bad system. I just said that the system breaks current city transport planning and therefore either these plans will be changed (what basically means absolute liberalization) or the government and municipalities will fight against the system (and here I would bet more on the government rather than on certain amount of people believing they can earn nice money by providing basically unlicensed taxi services).
Generally I am quite astonished by the wave of uproar for Uber (by other guys than Uber drivers and their families of course …).
And even more that this wave generally supports just Uber and blames all other, more or less identical, applications.
I read the article for which Charlie posted the link. If the article is paid by Uber so then all is fine – it’s nothing else than the plane ad …
I neither like nor dislike Uber – just wondering from where are coming so many ‘Uber fighters’ …
I just said that the system breaks current city transport planning and therefore either these plans will be changed (what basically means absolute liberalization) or the government and municipalities will fight against the system (and here I would bet more on the government rather than on certain amount of people believing they can earn nice money by providing basically unlicensed taxi services). Generally I am quite astonished by the wave of uproar for Uber (by other guys than Uber drivers and their families of course …). And even more that this wave generally supports just Uber and blames all other, more or less identical, applications. I read the article for which Charlie posted the link. If the article is paid by Uber so then all is fine – it’s nothing else than the plane ad … I neither like nor dislike Uber – just wondering from where are coming so many ‘Uber fighters’ …
I have a hard time understanding some of your English. But two things:
- If you don’t understand why people care about Uber by now, I am doubtful that you will at all. Faced with a mountain of testimonials and evidence as to why Uber is important to people here, you continue to say “I don’t get it”
- The article wasn’t paid for by anyone. If that looks like an advertisement to you… well, I don’t really know what to say. It’s not.
I neither like nor dislike Uber – just wondering from where are coming so many ‘Uber fighters’ …
I’ve left a response to your comment on the article, regarding why I chose to write about Uber and why there might seem to be a disproportionately large amount of support or conversation about it. I’ve been hoping the conversation might migrate to the comments section of the article, so here’s a link to my response.
https://thenanfang.com/violence-sichuan-uber-driver-taxi-cabbies/
That’s alarming. I will ask the next Uber driver that I encounter about this. They seem to have an expansive support network here in Chengdu.
Now that’s gangsta!
Exciting stuff finally starts happening as I’m about to leave..
As someone who has worked for a cab company as a controller, I sympathize with the green cab drivers.
I’m really surprised by this aggression. I talked about this topic with three different cab drivers, they told me that they had more than enough clients already and two of them did not even bother using official app like didi.
They also told me that they did not considered it as a threat since they’re still driving all day like they used to.
So I’m really surprised to see how much cabs in Chengdu are fighting against Uber and also how violent this protestation seems to be, is there not more of a story behind this ?
In our podcast about Uber we featured a song by a local rapper named Melo who recorded a song about Uber. Crazy to read in the New York Times about this story: A Rapper’s Ode to Uber, Chengdu Gangster Style
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