Slashdot Mirror
Uber Banned In Delhi After Taxi Driver Accused of Rape
RockDoctor writes BBC News is reporting that a 26-year old Indian woman is alleging rape against a driver for the embattled Uber transport-managing company. In a post on the Uber blog, one "Saad Ahmed" implicitly admits that the driver was a Uber driver, that the lift was arranged through Uber's service, and that the full range of Uber's safety mechanisms had been applied to his employment, and by implication, that Uber accepts some culpability for putting this (alleged) rapist into contact with his (alleged) victim. "Our initial investigations have revealed shortcomings of the private cab company which didn't have GPS installed in its cabs and the staff wasn't verified," Delhi Special Commissioner Deepak Mishra said. But Uber says safety was paramount, and added it had GPS traces of all journeys. "We work with licensed driver-partners to provide a safe transportation option, with layers of safeguards such as driver and vehicle information, and ETA-sharing [estimated time of arrival] to ensure there is accountability and traceability of all trips that occur on the Uber platform," its statement added.
Sadly, it appears that rapes are so common in India that they should also ban public parks, buses, trains and Starbucks.
While that may be true, I think that the point being made in this case is that Uber said one thing about their cars/drivers safety, yet post-indicdent it seems that they may not have told the truth.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Uber. It means super in German. That's misleading. It should be called Rides with Strangers Without Background Checks.
In other words, you're victim blaming, and have no clue what you're talking about because you've never been to India and are therefore oversimplifying the problem like a fucking idiot?
Let's take Uber at its word and accept that the "full range of safety mechanisms" was truly applied, and those mechanisms comport with contemporary acceptable standards for background checks in India.
If that is the case, and the guy came up clean but yet still went on to do X, how is Uber any more culpable than a taxi company hiring a cabbie with no record, who subsequently goes out and does X, or a tour company hiring a bus driver with a spotless background, who nonetheless does X?
Nothing posted to
Could you then please sketch what an Uber advertorial should like like?
We aim to disrupt public transportation by skirting the law, through predatory price increases when the services are most needed, use drivers that are not bonded or properly insured, and if you dare to say anything we don't like, we'll threaten to harass you and your families.
Hello and welcome to Uber.
We are going to pretend that we offer you a service like a taxi, you know - licensed and regulated so that we manage to keep whack jobs out of the driving seat and you can feel a measure of safety in your journey.
But instead, for half the price we are going to send you some completely random fucker that we have no real record of. He could be anyone, and probably is. So basically you are hitchhiking with all of the associated risks, but you are paying us for the privilege.
Yay for Uber. Please feel free to call* and ask questions if you survive your trip.
* actually not really, this would push up costs. But you know, it's the thought that counts.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Because it's not like anyone's ever been raped by a 'licensed and regulated' taxi driver.
Being a convicted rapist doesn't even seem to be an impediment to getting a taxi license in the UK:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...
If Uber is not a taxi service, what is it? If it's a "ride service", shouldn't there be regulations, statutes, city codes addressing its operation? What liability does Uber accept for the behavior and actions of its drivers?
Having spent many years living in Asia, I can tell you confidently how to solve *much* of the rape problem in India: Legalize and institutionalize prostitution.
Unlike every nation in Asia, India has a tiny sex-trade per capita. Smaller even than in the United States. Couple poverty with truly intense social mores, highly limited pre-marital sex and a defacto caste system (despite the propaganda) and you have a recipe for pent up male sexuality. The standard modern response mechanism is to demonize said sexuality and hope to preach morality and respect to a seething mass of adolescent male anger and hormones. To say this policy of condemnation has failed is an understatement. When policy fails, pursuing more of it is insane.
Prostitution is a rational free-market solution which carries many additional economic benefits besides reduced sexual violence.
Now cue scores of sexist, white-knight "do-gooders" who will say things like "sex-work endangers women" and other sexist statements that treat women like children. (If you're going to insist, show me the stats please, and then cross reference against miners, fishermen, industrial labor, law enforcement and the military).
Male sexuality is male sexuality. And in societies where it is deprived to hundreds of millions of men (for decades) until said men prove themselves worthy of marriage is an exercise in social disaster.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Police needs to be disbanded when policeman makes a violent crime.
Army needs to be disbanded when army people kill a person.
The medical profession and regulations need to be disbanded, when malpractice occurs, for it takes only one mistake to cause harm.
All the regulations need to be disbanded, because they do not make the crime disappear.
Most of the males need to be aborted, using the same logic, for all the males are statistically potential rapists. The remaining pool for the purposes of procreation should be kept all locked in the "Male camps" and used during scheduled conjugal visits.
In a most populous country with more than 1 billion people, statistically there will be all kind of mishaps, accidents and crimes. It is unavoidable.
If truly rapes and strangers are an issue, then most of the progress would be achieved in eliminating this type of crime closing all the night clubs and bar.
Also the night life is when a lot of crime happens, it is safer if all the people would be under curfew during the dark hours.
Or she just did not have the money to pay the fare. But of course, this is misogynistic. Something like that NEVER happens.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Due diligence can fail. Uber claims they did their background checks; apparently this is hard in India, as every police district has its own database: if you commit a crime in some other town, you're not on file locally. You have to physically walk to each precinct and request information about the person's criminal record--every city in India, every precinct--which could take years to verify the criminal history of one man.
You can cut this down by only looking into where he worked or lived before, which is less-accurate but faster. There's no way to verify that he isn't telling you about all the places he's lived or worked, so he can leave out places where he committed crimes.
Criminal liability lies with criminals.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
With a valuation of $40,000,000,000.00 "embattled" is hardly the adjective I'd use.
Best Slashdot Co
So why don't do the same thing with police officers? Make an app so that people can sign up and when a real police is sick, some random guy gets a gun and a badge for a day. If he makes a mistake, it's not the end of the world, because real police officers also make mistakes. Right?
Hell, we could do it with surgeons too...
Per capita, there are 20 times more rape cases in the US than in India. But rapes sell newspapers so thats all you see on the front pages.
You have to take the law into consideration when looking at those statistics. In the U.S., the law allows for rape charges if a wife is forced to have sex with her husband. In India, the law can only be invoked if the husband and wife are separated.
Also, there are social reasons for underreporting of rape in India. If you file rape charges, then you are considered to have been raped. This can be cause for a future arranged marriage to be terminated, a marriage to be terminated and for the woman to be shunned.
It used to be similar in the U.S., but woman were empowered and encouraged to speak out. There are still a lot of rapes not reported, but there are also a lot of false reports as well.
In all, it is difficult to compare rates of a lawbreaking in countries where the law differs as do also the social implications of reporting the charge,
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Unless you count criminal or legal liability, and then it's really important.
Sorry, but bullshit:
They are the ones making claims which aren't supported in law.
No, I've heard actual Uber spokespeople talking to the media, because they're trying to come into the city where I live.
They keep saying "oh, we don't need commercial licenses" and "we don't need to do that". The problem is that they're full of shit and can't unilaterally decree they're not covered by the law.
Having heard their arguments about why the law doesn't apply to them, or why they're special because they're not a cab company but a software company ... I'm forced to conclude they're willing to operate outside of the law, and seem to think they can be the ones to decide what laws and regulations apply to them.
Sorry, but that's completely delusional. All they are is an app which allows for pirate cabs, which they somehow think exempts them from legal oversight.
That's pretty much bullshit.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yeah, because the "regulated" taxi industry *never* has these problems. Oh, wait.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/ci...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/s...
Note the last one there is a gang rape.
The problem, as always, is that people like you think that "regulation" of the taxi industry has anything to do with the stuff that the regulators claim it's about. Look up "regulatory capture" when you have a spare hour or so. I'll warn you - your world view is about to get a dramatic overhaul.
Do you have ESP?
The law in India? Oh you mean like 498a? Which has been used *many* times by a wife to falsely accuse her husband or his family of trying to demand dowry from her which led to the husband *and his family* to all be arrested and jailed immediately with zero evidence needed. *Just* the accusation. It was only in June of this year that India's Supreme Court put a stop the mandatory arrest policy.
If you think for a second that the wives in India don't have a *very* strong weapon to use if they get raped (let alone for anything else including just petty revenge) then you're very mistaken.
No, it's the wives in India that hold legal power in the marriages. Not the husbands.
(http://www.498a.org/ for more info about it)
'Our system utterly failed. Therefore we need more of it.'
A private company who intentionally allowed a convicted rapist to work for them in a situation where they could rape people would be sued into oblivion. When the government does it, the Mayor just gets to resign.
Woosh. GP is saying that even though real police officers make mistakes (or intentional transgressions), a random, untrained, unvetted person with a badge and a gun would easily make ten times the number of mistakes. The same applies to cab drivers.
I disagree. Cops have been trained to be violent, rights-abusing assholes who act without fear of repercussion. Cabbies have been trained to be terrible, aggressive, drivers.
A random person in either position would not be as cavalier. You may have fewer arrests and you may not make it to the airport on time, but society as a whole would be much better off.
Uber is "ride sharing" the same way hiring a carpenter is "hammer sharing."
predatory price increases when the services are most needed
This is an unfair critisism. When demand is highest (rush hour on a rainy day) the prices should go up. The higher price will give an incentive for more drivers to provide the service. That is the way free markets work. The alternative is to have shortages or rationing when demand is high, and a glut when demand is low (which is how taxis work).
No economic system is going to give you everything you want, at the price you want to pay, but a free market is going to come closest.
I totally agree with you for the reasons why rape is so common in India.
But there's no need to be a white-knight do-gooder to realize that (at least in Europe), many prostitutes aren't so happy about their job, and that many are there because of the mafia.
I never tried prostitution for this reason. Give me a "fair-trade pussy" label and I'd be happy to try it.
Woosh. GP is saying that even though real police officers make mistakes (or intentional transgressions), a random, untrained, unvetted person with a badge and a gun would easily make ten times the number of mistakes. The same applies to cab drivers.
Yes, and I disagree. Police work attracts a certain kind of person - the kind who needs to control others. Bringing in random people would actually make for a *better* police force.
Do you have ESP?
This is a complete myth invented by proponents of some surrealistic, twisted form of feminism. It has no basis in verifiable facts.
weinersmith
Non-police don't have the training and experience required to allow them to perform the duties of a real police officer - there's substantial risk of donut overdose.
Requiem for the American Dream