Fully behind a fair market and competition being good for all business, so a well run equal opportunity market is far better than a monopolised one. The Uber model worries me as it is so different in price it seems too good to be true and if they are losing the amount quoted above its a huge loss leader for what reason?

Uber doesn't make any money--the lose billions. Everything they do is loss leader. The whole business model of Uber/Lyft is to drive the taxis out of business, and then when/if that happens the Uber/Lyft prices will go through the roof.

Incorrect. Uber is almost singularly focused on self-driving cars. Whether taxis survive or not is immaterial.

As a producer of the cars to sell to the public or as a supplier of technology to auto companies?

Or just as a replacement for their drivers?

It's pretty clear the majority of consumers choose a cheaper price over the added security that regulation might provide. We can argue that people are short sighted, stupid or ill-informed but the bottom line is that they want to save money. A better way of getting consumers what they want might be more/better information instead of regulation.
Exactly. But the taxi industry in it's current form will die anyway. A guy who stands up from the couch to walk to your TV to flip the channel might be very convenient if you don't have a remote. But as soon as you have one, that person is obsolete.

Self-driving cars will add scalability to a degree where big players will take over the market and Uber tries to get into a position where they are #1 from day one. FWIW, the "when?" on self-driving cars is more of a political issue than a technological one.

The people who say Uber is undercutting the market just to raise prices as soon as they've eliminated taxi companies are the same people who claimed that Amazon will hike up their prices if they are able to establish themselves as the #1 shopping option. Instead, they kept prices low and rely on superior technology, market power and cheap labor to make money anyway.

so far Uber has avoided paying out in multiple "life changing" accidents due to the loophole of the driver not being an employee. (they are independent contractors)

They did not pay an injured passenger?
Links?

They don't want to pay if they don't have to.

Uber does standard sketchy corporate stuff of trying to classify employees as independent contractors to get around labor laws and avoid giving benefits such as health insurance.

Incorrect. That's the smoke and mirrors. Self-driving cars are at least 50 years away.

Can you even imagine self-driving cars dropping off (and picking up) at McCarran Airport?

Yea, right.

For the slim chance that you are not trolling, a self-driving car could do exactly that right now.

Self-driving cars log millions of miles all across the country but the only time you hear about it is when they are involved in an accident. Which btw happens significantly less frequently than when the average driver would be driving the car.

He sounds like the youtube commenters that are aghast when Negreanu takes his hands off the wheel of his Tesla.

by 50 years away, he meant operating commercially today

I predict self-driving cars will be around for a little while, and then the first time someone dies in an accident involving one they will be banned.

just like the first time someone got killed by a regular car!

Not really the same thing. People probably felt more in control of cars than they did of horses. The DC subway system was designed to function without drivers, but after a few minor malfunctions they put drivers in them and never tried again AFAIK. People trust people more than they trust automatic systems, even though they usually shouldn't.

Even though I believe most functions of a large passenger airplane are automatic, if one airline got rid of their pilots and went to all automatic, I would chose to fly on their competitor that still had a pilot, just in case. Wouldn't you?

from your posts i can only assume you don't know any of the data.

the day self driving cars become economically viable will be similar to the day cancer is cured. creating self driving cars is literally going to save millions of people from pointless death. yes, occasionally, something will go screwy and someone will get killed. today, 3000 people get killed daily in auto accidents. you and others will simply have to get over the fact that computers are much better drivers than people.

this holds for airplanes as well. i would probably fly in a plane with no pilot, yes. assuming the computer is much better at flying than the pilot, which would be true.

I could be wrong, but for the record, I'm not making any claims about data or safety, and I'm not saying I wouldn't trust a self-driving car. I'm saying I think a good portion of the public wouldn't, and that the regulators would over-respond to any problems that come up.

yea, you might be right, but they will just have to get over it. the cars are already out on the road. i heard about one that got in an accident, it was the human's fault. in Australia, they're already using self driving trucks to ship stuff across their barren landscape.

our lawmakers might be dumb but even the dumbest ones should be able to realize the 7 people per year that will get killed by automatic cars is a better deal than the 1,000,000 that will get killed this year by regular cards

And nobody forced online poker players to play on loosely regulated sites like Full Tilt, either.

The free market works really well when information is freely available - that is, if heavily regulated Company A and loosely regulated Company B both freely admit their pros and cons and the public can make a rational decision, the free market is very good at establishing an equilibrium. But if Company A or Company B lies about its pros or cons, the free market is not efficient at all.

In this case, let's start with a fundamental question - if you get into an Uber and the driver says he carries $500,000 in insurance, are you protected to the degree you should be?

Most people don't understand their own insurance requirements, much less that of someone else's, and asking the free market to decide whether Uber can self-regulate is like asking people whether they would rather pay $1/gallon for water that contains 1 part per million lead or $10/gallon for water that contains 1 part per billion lead.

I think I'd rather have self-driving cars be over-regulated rather than under-regulated.

That seems like an unlikely scenario when you consider the politics of gun control.

Overall, I think the idea of self-driving cars requires building up the technological infrastructure to support a massive surveillance state, which I am not necessarily against. It shouldn't be some sort of self-contained car that drives itself, it should be a huge network that determines the most efficient way to coordinate movement.

Imagine an intersection where cars don't stop because the network makes the vehicles go at the correct speed with the proper spacing so they can criss-cross safely. This would, of course, require no human drivers at the intersection.

That's the main problem because people are stupid.

Drunk/high/sleeping/texting driver kills somebody? big deal, happens all the time. Self-driving car kills its passenger? Wow, that's ridiculous! Stop that madness and disallow that evil technology.

Besides that, taxis won't even be the biggest hurdle because there are "only" a couple hundred thousand cab drivers in the US and their lobby is relatively weak. In comparison, there are 3.5 million truck drivers whose job will be equally obsolete. But their lobby is way stronger.
And most people with some kind of common sense knew that their money wasn't 100% save there and acted accordingly aka withdrew regularly to put it somewhere protected by a deposit protection fund. That one might fail too, but only if the whole banking system of the respective country/currency area fails, at which point they would have bigger problems.

As already stated, I believe that companies should be required to better inform their customers instead of trying to protect customers by more regulation. The risk of getting raped in an Uber is 2x the risk of a cab? Force Uber to let customers know. Or let the Uber app show the insurance status of a driver so passengers can make informed decisions.

I lived in the D.C. area for 30+ years and afaik, Metro trains have always been manned. While it's true that acceleration and braking was done by an automated system for many years, drivers have always been present in the cabin and the operators set the speed and were always in control of opening and closing doors.

At some point when the powers that be decree that driverless cars are the norm and should be unleased upon society, shouldn't I, you, we have a say in this?

Isn't this something that should be voted on? Are we just to trust the powers that be that everything will be fine with driverless cars, "just trust us."

I vote no. I want to drive my own car, and I want other people to driver their own cars. I want to see those drivers. I want to be able to see their faces. I want to be able to roll down my window and ask them if I can go in front of them because I decided on a different destination.

It will be a long, long time before driverless cars work in our society, yet the conversation is such that it is a cetainty in the not too distant future. It's an inevitability. It's safe. It will work. What could go wrong?

I don't see it. I don't want it. I should have a say.

Wat? You think people wanna shoot the computer that just cut him off?

Absurd. Vehicles will do fine as self-contained systems. There's no need for a traffic God to control every single vehicle.