Thursday, December 22, 2016

Do Uber taxi drivers commit more sex assaults?

Incentives Matter

You kinda gotta expect it. I mean, superficially, there ought to be no statistical disparity between the number of small and independent taxi drivers and the number of corporate Uber taxi drivers who commit sexual assaults. Employees of both the politically favored Uber and the maligned incumbent taxi operators will often find themselves in the proximity of vulnerable people. Yet the news reports continue to stream in about Uber cabbies assaulting their customers.

Is it real? Or just an anomaly?

I see one significant difference, though, between Uber cabbies, and those who complied with government taxi industry mandates.

The average non-Uber taxi driver enters the trade as a means to a livelihood. He obtains a license. It costs him time and money. It becomes a thing of value to him. He doesn't want to take unnecessary risks by preying on, rather than serving, customers.

HE DOESN'T WANT TO LOSE HIS TAXI LICENSE.

The average Uber taxi driver, on the other hand, couldn't give a shit.

He doesn't have to get a license. All he has to do is fill out a form and provide a driver's license and proof of car ownership.

The average Uber driver is NOT MOTIVATED by the desire to make a living driving a cab. Just read the Uber driver forums, as I do. Other than the few bullshitters, and they have always been around in the cab business..... you know the guys who boast they make 2X or more of the average on any given night, most of the Uber cabbies are either whining about how little they earn, or boasting that they don't really do it for the money. They do it for fun and adventure, or to alleviate boredom on Friday nights, like the granny I wrote about a week ago, or so, who completed an 800 mile round trip for Uber for a lousy $139 which covers barely half of her vehicle costs for that trip, let alone providing her with anything approximating a wage.

She said it was worth it to her because of the "adventure."

So it gets down to some lonely Travis Bickle type maniac, suffering from severe akathisia, deciding to take the opportunity Uber offers him, to cruise the bar districts at times when the supply of vulnerable, attractive, and mostly young, women goes into *surge* mode.

I think this is where the equilibrium between the frequency of Uber cab drivers vs. incumbents will experience a nudge in the direction of a larger number of Uber cabbies committing sexual assaults.

Paul Bernardo would have loved Uber.

And perhaps what pisses me off the most about this is that the politicians who are responding in knee-jerk, gutless, spineless, opportunistic, and completely predictable fashion to facilitate Uber's drive for power and profit, seem blissfully unaware, or sociopathically unconcerned with the monster they are unleashing.

London Uber driver CHARGED with sexually assaulting passenger.

One final comment.

Whenever I hear some spineless, gutless, politician or bureaucrat say, "Well, we will have to see what is being done in OTHER JURISDICTIONS," in other words, classic passing of the buck, I want to

PUKE.

In their minds, obviously, it's not a question of right or wrong. It's about the cowardly security that can be experienced by creatures whose main survival technique consists of blending with the herd, like so many wildebeest or striped zebras.

And then, to make matters even worse, I can't help but think of the salaries these paragons of public virtue receive compared to the pittance that cab drivers earn.