NewsWatch
Keeping a critical eye on Uber,
Lyft and other transportation
network companies
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Uber and Lyft to leave Austin after losing vote on fingerprinting
Uber and Lyft spent more than $8 million and bombarded voters with mailers, ads, phone calls and text messages. In the end, it wasn't enough to convince residents in Austin, Texas to vote against a new fingerprint requirement for drivers. On Saturday, Austin voted 56% to 44% against Proposition 1, which would have allowed ride-hailing companies to continue using their own background check systems. The city will now go ahead with plans to require fingerprint background checks and other regulations.
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The Uber driver's lament: $9 an hour
John Rice got behind the wheel for Uber Technologies about a year ago, not long after he bought a red Ford Fiesta. The Geneva resident's full-time job at a railroad gave him room in his schedule to drive, plus he was curious to work for a company that is disrupting its industry. Rice now picks up passengers using Lyft, too, working one day a week and saving what he earns for his son's future college expenses. He enjoys chatting with riders and seeing neighborhoods across the region. Yet Rice isn't saving much.
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How Uber promotes dangerously tired driving
Not long ago, I had a scary experience in an Uber, and the scariest thing about it, in retrospect, was how ordinary it was. Shortly after picking me up for an early-morning trip to the airport, my driver casually informed me, by way of making conversation, that he'd been on the road for more than 19 hours, with only one 90-minute break around midnight for a meal and a catnap. He was pulling the extra-long shift, he said, in hopes of earning an incentive payment for drivers who complete a certain number of trips in a week.
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Uber's services for the disabled lack actual cars
Sunday Parker can't catch an Uber in a neighborhood where they typically show up within five minutes. The 24-year-old works at a tech company in San Francisco and lives in Oakland. Born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Parker uses a power wheelchair to get around. She either takes public transit or needs a special vehicle with a hydraulic lift. Uber has an option that Parker could use. Called UberWAV, it offers vehicles especially for people with power wheelchairs or motorized scooters. There's only one problem: the service is a ghost town.
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Uber, Lyft unfit to serve people with disabilities, report says
Partnerships between ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft and public transit agencies do more harm than good to people with disabilities, according to a report from the nation's largest transit union. The Amalgamated Transit Union released a report arguing against a recent push among several transit systems to reduce paratransit costs by contracting with ride-hailing services.
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Judge: Women can sue Uber over alleged sexual assaults
Two women who allege that Uber drivers sexually assaulted them, one in Boston and the other in South Carolina, can sue the ride-hailing company, a federal judge said. The women showed the possibility that the drivers were Uber employees who acted within the scope of their employment, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ruled. Uber had argued that the drivers were independent contractors and at least one of them may not have used the company cellphone app, where customers book rides, before the alleged assault.
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Uber's denial of blame for sex attacks fails to kill lawsuit
Uber Technologies Inc.'s denial of responsibility for sexual assaults by drivers failed to derail a lawsuit brought by two women who say they were attacked last year. A San Francisco federal judge rejected the company's claim that it can't be blamed for misconduct by drivers, who it classifies as contractors rather than employees. While the ruling didn't address the merits of the case, it may encourage other women to file suits amid mounting allegations of criminal behavior by drivers.
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Uber Mexico City driver accused of rape detained by prosecutors
A driver for ride-hailing app Uber was detained in Mexico City after a female passenger accused him of raping her, a spokeswoman from the city's prosecutor's office said. The passenger said she was raped earlier in May after being picked up by the Uber driver in the upmarket Condesa neighborhood, said the spokeswoman, who declined to be identified. The driver was detained and was being held in a prison in Mexico City, the spokeswoman said.
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Uber is facing a nationwide class-action lawsuit
Less than a month after Uber settled two class-action lawsuits in California and Massachusetts, another one has popped up. This time, the suit pertains to all current and former Uber drivers in the United States, except for those in California and Massachusetts. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Chicago division, asks the court to classify Uber divers as employees rather than independent contractors, "recover unpaid overtime wages and compensation," reimburse expenses, and pay the tips that "were earned but stolen by Uber or were lost" due to Uber's communications and policies.
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Ruling may put the brakes on Uber
The Swiss National Accident Insurance Fund has ruled that a driver from the ride-sharing service Uber is an employee, rather than self-employed, going against Uber's business model. This could threaten the future of service in Switzerland, experts say. "It's a hard blow for Uber's business model," work law expert Thomas Geiser told Swiss public television SRF's Rundschau program. "This means that every other case involving an Uber driver will be treated the same," said the St Gallen University professor.
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Driver for Uber's Chinese rival arrested over killing
Uber's big Chinese rival, Didi Chuxing, has suffered a setback after a driver for the company was arrested on suspicion of robbing and killing a female passenger. Local police in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen said they began investigating after receiving a missing persons report from a man who couldn't reach his wife after she ordered a taxi from a ride-hailing app.
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New app gives Uber a little disruption of its own
Uber Technologies Inc. built a big business by pushing past regulations that limit competition with taxis. But the tech-industry darling isn't always happy with smaller companies trying similar tactics. A group of five Harvard Business School students is fighting Uber's demand to stop displaying the ride-hailing service's prices next to competitors' in a new app, a clear violation of Uber's rules for tapping into its fare-price data.
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RIP Uber for jets
Uber for private jets couldn't get off the ground, even after several attempts. The Jay-Z and Ashton Kutcher backed startup, which promised a network of on-demand jets for a jet-setting clientele, experienced layoffs followed by a shutdown back in 2013, and abruptly did the same this week, ostensibly for good. It doesn't mean the idea of uber for flights is dead--other private services offer similar annual-package-based memberships that offer a certain number of flights for a certain fee.
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