Protests against Uber are heating up in Europe

I&#x27;d like to highlight this part of the article:<p>&gt; <i>In several of the protests, drivers aren&#x27;t specifically targeting Uber and other service providers, but what they say is outmoded regulation that makes it hard for them to compete. Part of Uber&#x27;s challenge in Europe is the variety of regulations governing the continent, even among the 28-member European Union, each of which has different unions and different rules.</i><p>It&#x27;s easy to dismiss off the protestors as old hat for not reacting gracefully to a changing market, but the issue at least in London seems to largely be with the fact that their existing businesses are subject to more costs and regulations than the kinds that Uber and other services are facing.<p>So let&#x27;s spare a thought for the taxi drivers who&#x27;ve spent years building up their skills and knowledge of the local area, especially in places like London [1], and hope that they can be given the opportunity to compete with Uber. After all, if it weren&#x27;t for the existing Taxi industry it&#x27;s possible companies like Uber wouldn&#x27;t even exist.<p>There should be space in the market for both the traditional offering and the fancy new one, and I hope that they can learn from each other and improve as a result of the competition, rather than die out.<p>EDIT: To be clear, I&#x27;m not saying Uber should be forced to play by the rules. I&#x27;m saying that it might be time for the rules to be re-assessed based on developments in the industry.<p>[1]: In London, our famous black cabs are driven only by cabbies who&#x27;ve spent months learning London like the back of their hands in order to give their customers the fastest (and most interesting, in many cases) journey possible. See The Knowledge: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#The_Knowledge" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...</a>

I&#x27;m not sure I believe as strongly in the idea in places like London, where the official cab service is both highly regulated, and quite good.<p>In the US, the regulations for cabs tend to do little but drive up medallion prices. Uber cars are a much-needed disruption in terms of availability and quality, but you still can&#x27;t really say that the drivers know much of anything about the city. If we had the equivalent of a London cab here in SF, I&#x27;d always choose that over Uber, yet I think you can probably undercut the price of an official taxi in London simply by ignoring the rules. That seems wrong.<p>If unregulated competition kills a <i>good</i> taxi service, that seems like a drastically different outcome than what&#x27;s happening here in the states.

I just do not see why uber can be disruptive AND follow the rules. Here in Sweden they are lobbying to get exception from the rules, i.e. not having a meter and not having price comparisons on the cars.<p>It&#x27;s not hard to be disruptive if you break the rules

Sad to see the taxi drivers. What they don’t understand is that soon they will be obsolete. As many other groups. IT startups are extremely disruptive and changes like these are hard to stop. With Google driverless cars around, it’s safe to say that in 30 years no one will need a driver. Uber and competitors could just buy driverless, extra-comfortable cars and get over with.<p>The problem is, what do you do with thousands of people working today as cabbies? Or you don’t give a shit about a large % of the population not having an income (and thus not being a consumer).

It&#x27;s interesting how the tech start-up community suffers from the same inability to shift perspective that Microsoft had when it became a powerful megacorp but still saw itself as the underdog.<p>Uber is not the plucky little start-up going up against big, slow incumbent corporations, like many tech start-ups did in the past.<p>Uber is the heavily funded 800-pound gorilla going after the livelihoods of the little guy.<p>So yes, some taxi-markets could do with changes, but the heavy handed and callous approach of greed-driven &quot;disruption&quot; is totally out of place here. We&#x27;re talking ordinary hard working cab drivers, not fat cats in the boardroom of MegaCorp.<p>If anybody wonders where the growing hate against the tech community comes from, they may want to start looking in the mirror.<p>There&#x27;s a difference between arguing that innovative disruption may temporarily cause some pain and openly pissing on those who find themselves on the wrong side of that change. There is way too much of the latter going on here.

Taxi&#x27;s in Dublin have been a problem for a long time especially for people with up the socioeconomic ladder. The quality of the vehicles can vary as well as the manner of the driver. Regulation states the vehicles have to be clean but the driver is welcome to wear whatever they like and they often wear tracksuits and often espouse racist views (especially against Nigerian taxi drivers) which undermines the perceived professionalism of the industry here.<p>Uber has really taken off here in part because the taxi industry wasn&#x27;t catering to this need. I do believe Uber is following the rules because they aren&#x27;t a taxi service. They can&#x27;t pick up people who flag them down off the street. They really are just a very sophisticated private car service and shouldn&#x27;t fall under taxi regulation. Since the credit card details are held by Uber it also ensures the passengers behave themselves unlike in normal taxis where drunk or rowdy people vomit or make a mess in the car putting the driver off the road for the night making the entire taxi service somewhat inefficient.

It boils down to the simple question:<p>Would you rather live in a world where the service, its quality, reliability, cost and professionalism is that of the current taxi services or the newcomers like Uber?<p>I have personally been ripped off, deceived about the route and pricing and forced to put up with rude drivers and operators so many times and in so many places that I cheer any competition, be it public transport or car sharing.

Why should we be excited for some US company siphoning off money from people who are already at the lower end of the wage scale?

Not sure about the UK cabs way of work. But what stops them being a UBER cab driver as well? Isn&#x27;t it a additional channel? Like in radio taxi can&#x27;t they simple make themselves busy when they get UBER call so that the cab company does not assign them any additional pickup&#x2F;drop?

Is this the first EU-wide strike, or has there been any such things in the past?

More people have heard about Uber thanks to these strikes than they ever would have (for the time being anyway...)

Taxi drivers in Europe are paid a fraction of the profits they get from clients, most of it goes to taxes and the operators running the cab networks.<p>Uber&#x27;s drivers are in a similar position.<p>So what do we have here? Another example of pitting poor against poor, for the interests of one group of rich against another, emerging, group of rich.<p>I almost admire the skillful orchestration at play here, although probably I shouldn&#x27;t.