Saturday, February 11, 2017

Is a Cheap Cab Ride really worth the Risks

MADD Canada is now promoting Distracted Driving.

"Saying she would never drink and drive, Sarah Milburn climbed into a Honda Odyssey after a birthday celebration, which soon ran a red light and crashed into a Ford F-150 pickup. She and her parents are now suing Uber, Honda, the Uber driver, and the owner of the van he drove (who allegedly was uninsured!) <italics - mine>. ^[source]

“Millions of people trust Uber with their lives, and they obviously aren’t doing it the right way,” she alleged in the Dallas News.

Links:

Distracted driving deadlier than impaired driving, police say ahead of holiday crackdown

Who's Driving You? Uber Incidents.

Did someone order an U*** Eldon street junction of Blomfield street 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/uT6qQw3wd7
— Dave Cappaert (@davecappaert) February 12, 2017

More Uber News

More proof that my predictive capabilities rival those of Gerald Celente.

Today, Uber drivers are again complaining about their poor earnings due to market saturation. Duh! Go figger.

See "No ping...90 mintues," then compare it to what I said on 1 January, 2016.

And then there's this from the Toronto Taxi News...

"Also in early January, a 24-year-old Austin woman who has been rendered a quadriplegic, is suing her Uber driver, and Uber after the car she was traveling in was T-boned in an intersection."

Hmmm..... T-boned? Didn't I just see something about that?

My, all time, favorite statement from the UberPeople.net forum...

In response to,

"But in the case of this woman, she inherited it. She didn't pay a dime for it. (the taxi plate.)

And besides, these medallions are supposed to be a license for a car to be used as a taxi. They were never intended to be investment instruments."

jfr1 wrote,

"No, but her parents did, with the intention of being able to sell at any point, or pass down that value to their kids.

These medallions are not pure "investment instruments", they're not GICs, TDs, mortages, etc. They're licenses to operate a business in a restricted market... not substantially different than a Tim Hortons franchise. That business includes purchasing a car, outfitting it for taxi-use, and either driving it, or employing specially licensed drivers to operate it on your behalf. That's what they get used for.

Obviously, any time you invest in a business, it carries risk; however, no amount of due diligence could've predicted that the city and law enforcement would all of a sudden one day simply fail to enforce the laws of society; without us having gone to a zombie apocalypse. "

https://uberpeople.net/threads/back-in-the-news-again-uber-insurance.32590/page-22#post-511661

The reason libertarianism appealed to me in the first place is because I don't like seeing people being bullied or defrauded.

I have spent a great big chunk of my life studying, and promoting, the libertarian philosophy without a single penny's worth of compensation.

My old man used to be so frustrated with my lack of material ambition. I would be sitting back on the couch, reading Ayn Rand, or Reason Magazine, and he would look at me with disgust. "You know, if you spent half as much time thinking about your future income prospects, you would be highly successful."

Yeah, "but if you're not doing one thing, you're doing something else," as my late friend Jay Speiger said. In economics, they call it, "opportunity cost."

So sure. My dad was right. If I had followed his advice I might, today, have a much newer car, and own a house rather than renting one. I still wrestle with whether I made the right choice.

People ask me, "why are you pissing in the wind with your obsession with Uber?"

For the same reasons given above.