Minicab-hailing app Uber is lawful – UK High Court

Not necessarily

Difference between a minicab/hackney carriage driven for metered fare and hailed to stop and a taxi where a fee or charging model can be agreed at booking.

Or maybe we don't need to legislate this kind of antique common-sense stuff any more.

If Uber, as a service chosen by the customer, is misleading or defruading customers as to trip lengths / costs, then we sue them into oblivion like any other company doing the same thing.

Why does a taxi need a specific exemption here? This is about taximeters. Getting into a random cab that has a deliberately-dodgy taximeter, yes, that's a risk that could see customers have no way to prove otherwise and be subject to falsified or modified prices. The chances of the customer's own phone misrepresenting the distance they travelled? The chances of Uber mis-charging based on your one-mile journey as something other than a one-mile journey? No, it's not worth legislating. As such, the "taximeter" is in the user's hands and quite possibly Uber stand more chance of being defrauded than anyone else.

And let's be honest, the whole thing comes down historically to dodgy cabs, and is now brought up to try to support certain classes of taxis that are surpassed by an online service with random drivers.

This is a sour-grapes / outdated industry protection, nothing to do with customers being defrauded. This is about trying to find a legal loophole to stick Uber to the wall because it's making taxis obsolete. Two of my cousins are taxi drivers. They work hard and make money. But if you can't book a cab with a smartphone, can't find where to hail one, they won't go "sarf of the river", etc. then they are doing themselves no favours as an industry. That someone can rock up with an app that cuts into their income overnight means that they could have done the same. The laws to protect and licence the taxi profession are actually working AGAINST them here, because they are so inflexible. Rather than resolve that, they are trying to make everyone work by their rules, including these new usptarts that are taking money from them.

To be honest, I've used about 3-4 black taxis in my entire life. I've had them drive past me despite advertising their availability. I find them difficult to locate when you need one. They often refuse, even if they are not supposed to. Minicabs and other licensors are just the same and you aren't even legally allowed to hail one on the street. So the workaround is to "book" one immediately near your location and use it. It's booked. It turns up. It takes you where you want. You're given a price beforehand with proof, and they don't refuse once they arrive.

Black cabs are just having sour-grapes over their own monopoly protections working against them rather than for them, and Uber have a loophole that they can't defeat in court. To be honest, good. We need licensed cabs, certainly. Licencing is a necessary safety feature. Everything else about black-cabs, including special legal protection, stupidly overpriced vehicles that can only be maintained by their stupidly overpriced manufacturer, lack of combined apps, and in-car taximeters being the definitive pricing and having no idea what your journey will cost until you get there, all needs to be got rid of in the modern era.

Cloudy Ponds

The relevancy of your personal journeys being beamed across the pond to an unsafe harbour is not a legal issue here. The more worrying concept is the point of law here that the more general case of the actual calculation was not done on a device in the mini-cab but 'somewhere outside/in the cloud'.

Given that for thirty years or more IT has been increasingly distributing computing stuff like that has gone from client to serverside back to clientside and even a combination of the two. Humanside should see no difference, the result of the calculation is no different. But here we are stuck on a point of law designed when the taximeter was all cogs and wheels.

Which is a problem when IT is moving at a rather faster pace than the law.

Take your point in a units and measures sense, but the value to me is what I'm willing to pay to get from A to B with the absolute minimum of bother.

Given that others probably think the same, price will govern itself accordingly - what people are willing to shell out.

With other private hire operators eg Addison Lee, they give you a quote for the journey, which may be based on distance and estimated time based on current traffic conditions, or any other criteria they see fit, and if you accept it, that is the price you pay regardless of what happens afterwards.

There are apps that will give you quotes from a number of different operators, along with the estimated time of arrival, and you can pick the one you want. Again, if you accept it, that is the price you pay.

Re: Watch the taximob shills come crawling out of the woodwork

If they spend the afternoon blocking the road outside my office again, sounding their horns continuously, then they're going to get their knowledge shoved where the sun don't shine!

Re: Watch the taximob shills come crawling out of the woodwork

I expect that the Hackney trade insist that Uber's fare calculation mechanism is a taximeter, then by their same areguments they must insist that Uber-type taxis are ply-for-hire (Hackney) taxis, and consequently must apply for a ply-for-hire (Hackney) license. To me, as a former taxi licenser, Uber-type taxis are clearly private hire vehicles.

Re: What am I missing

It's a very narrow distinction (both legally, and in terms of the end result), but I think the idea is that your journey literally isn't metered, in real-time, with Uber, whereas it is with a taxi meter. I'm at best ambivalent towards Uber, because they play fast and loose with the law, but Tim Worstall's article, on rent seeking, made me think again.

Re: What am I missing

"Whether the method is GPS/Distance based or ground distance & stoppage based - does it matter? I will still have travelled distance "x" and it will still cost £y.."

How do minicabs do it? There's a difference between looking at how far you've been driven (or how long it's taken) and calculating a fare from it, and having the fare automatically calculated and displayed as you drive along, from a device built into the car and directly connected to the wheels. Uber does none of that.

Re: What am I missing

I think the main difference is that a Black Cab measures the cost as you go, whereas the Uber/Lyft/whatever app measures the distance and works out a cost before the journey.

In practise, it means that when you book a cab and the route is blocked due to a road closure (as happened to me a week ago), they'll take you around the issue and still get you home for the same fee (as it was agreed before the journey), whereas a Black Cab would charge more.

Re: Hackney licence.

I've argued for years that there should be a single taxi licence, that any license-holder should be allowed to both take bookings and ply for hire. This would mean that what is current private hire could ply for hire, but also what is currently private hires would be subject to the regulated fare ceiling.

Re: Hackney licence.

The taxi is required to take you anywhere - the minicab isn't.

The taxi drivers would argue that they need a monopoly to make up for the loses by having to take less profitable fares rather than picking and choosing only profitable trips to the airport.

Obviously the solution today is simply market pricing - the rate/mile to go across south of the river after 10:00 could be more than a trip to Heathrow.

Re: Boring..

hopefully they will adopt similar software made by someone else. Competition is a good thing

Re: Couple of things that bother me

1) Surge pricing's great in my book. It's pretty predictable normally, and if you're worried about it going to 1.2x or something, you can watch on the app, do fare estimates, and see when's cheap. Or if it's really expensive, you might decide to share an Uber. Which is kind of the point of surge pricing.

2) It's as much part of Uber as the regulations say it has to be in any given country. So in London, for example, Uber drivers have exactly the same licensing and insurance requirements as any other minicab driver.