Question about Uber.

[Yavin4]

How do you know or how can you protect yourself from a driver that could be a serial killer or rapist or both? At least with taxis, there's some sort of documentation that you can rely on and the company can be held civilly liable which incentivizes them to do a background check.

[Nye Bevan]

1. For one thing, there's a permanent GPS electronic record of exactly who picked you up,

and where exactly they went. Also, riders get to rate their driver one to five stars for every rate, and those who fall below an average rating of (I think) four stars get kicked out. Probably why ever Uber car I have ever taken has been clean and nice and the driver polite.

You probably won't find such safeguards in most no-name livery companies.

[Travis_0004]

2. Uber does a background check

Also, if I go out to hail a cab, besides me and the driver, nobody knows that I got in the cab.

If I call for a ride on Uber, and show up missing, there is a record of the exact person I got in the cab with, so I think from a safety standpoint, Uber is safer than a cab.

[jberryhill]

3. There's no objective evidence you got into a cab

Without making any larger point about Uber's business model, there is no cab company on the planet who knows who is getting into what cab, and very few cab companies that actually know, moment-to-moment, where their cabs are.

I'm not sure what kind of "documentation" you are thinking is generated when you get into a yellow cab on a street somewhere - or how you know it is actually a real cab and not a fake cab.

With Uber, you see the driver's picture, make and model of car, and the license plate number before the car even arrives. The app records, on Uber's server, who was picked up where, when, by whom and where they went. You don't get that kind of data recording with cabs.