I am all for healthy competition in life and initially applauded the arrival of a challenge to our expensive black cabs. My children use Uber on a regular basis and love it – mainly because it’s cheap. I’ve even been in several with them and it does seem to be highly efficient and well, as I mentioned, cheap. Often half the price of a black cab.
However, as I watched my daughter the other day, walk up and down a row of parked cars trying to find the Uber one she’d booked I started to have second thoughts. There are no signs on the cars to say they are Uber cabs. They just look like regular cars. Probably because they are regular cars, driven by regular people. Do they need any qualifications? Her app said it was here. But not what the car looked like. So which one to choose? What if she opened the door of one of the cars and was invited in? What if she had got into the car of an opportunist who was prepared to take a risk and abscond with my daughter somewhere? How are we sitting watching videos warning of not taking licensed taxi companies and yet seemingly encouraging not doing anything about Uber per se?
Uber has now been banned in Spain and Thailand as well as just recently in India. This is because a girl was raped by an Uber driver in New Delhi – allegedly he already faces a rape charge, but managed to forge a character reference that got him the job.
Last week the company was valued at $40bn. I’m not sure as a mother I am happy with the war they are waging here in London against the black cabs anymore and would be happier paying more and feeling safe. I am worried that it is only a matter of time before something happens – there appears to be no regulations or training (although I’m very happy to stand corrected on this) and whilst I’m all for modern technology and I know the details are on the app – anyone can get a fake driving licence these days – but it was the potential “curb crawling” you appear to have to do to find the right car that worried me because it is the younger generation that have embraced it.
