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Austin Is Conducting Sting Operations Against Ride-Sharing Drivers (examiner.com)
Since the Uber and Lyft ride-sharing apps stopped service in Austin, drunk driving has increased, riders are hunting for alternatives, and the police are conducting undercover sting operations against unauthorized ride-sharing drivers. With Chicago also considering new restrictions on ride-sharing apps, Slashdot reader MarkWhittington shares this report from Austin:
With thousands of drivers and tens of thousands of riders who once depended on ride-sharing services in a lurch, a group called Arcade City has tried to fill the void with a person-to-person site to link up drivers and riders who then negotiate a fare. Of course, according to a story on KVUE, the Austin city government, and the police are on the case. The Austin Police Department has diverted detectives and resources to conduct sting operations on ride-sharing drivers who attempt to operate without official sanction. Undercover operatives will arrange for a ride with an Arcade City driver and then bust them, impounding their vehicle and imposing a fine.
"The first Friday and Saturday after Uber was gone, we were joking that it was like the zombie apocalypse of drunk people," one former ride-sharing driver told Vocative.com. Earlier this month the site compared this year's drunk driving arrests to last years -- and discovered that in the three weeks since Uber and Lyft left Austin, 7.5% more people have been arrested for drunk driving.
"The first Friday and Saturday after Uber was gone, we were joking that it was like the zombie apocalypse of drunk people," one former ride-sharing driver told Vocative.com. Earlier this month the site compared this year's drunk driving arrests to last years -- and discovered that in the three weeks since Uber and Lyft left Austin, 7.5% more people have been arrested for drunk driving.
Uber and Lyft left Austin because the VOTERS decided in a referendum to demand that they do ground checks based on fingerprints. Uber and Lyft said that what they had was good enough. Lyft and Uber lost badly and they so they left. So, to be clear for you my astroturfing friend, most people VOTED AGAINST LYFT and UBER.
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
That's not exactly the whole story. After the referendum was put on the ballot, Uber and Lyft went nuts with advertising, including direct phone calls of people with Uber and Lyft accounts. Basically, they made themselves so annying that even those who might have supported them were completely pissed off. Then they had to leave to save face after all the effort they made into the vote. That left a vacuum which was filled by many small ride sharing companies.
As i understand it from hearing about it on radio a few days ago, the ride sharing company in question is a complete "pay whatever you want". (While nobody said as much on the interview, it sounded like they should have called it "all tips".) It is also structured differently than the others RSCs, and the city people wanted them to have some kind of permits that can't even be acquired by that kind of company.
"Earlier this month the site compared this year's drunk driving arrests to last years -- and discovered that in the three weeks since Uber and Lyft left Austin, 7.5% more people have been arrested for drunk driving."
Keep in mind that that was a 6 week sample in absolute terms (not relative to population growth or corrected for any other factors, like more aggressive policing, festivals/events that could have spiked rates, weather, etc - it was just raw year-over-year numbers). It's bad statistics. It's been a bit depressing to watch so many techies (including many of my data science friends who should know better) blindly believe Uber/Lyft's messaging.
I live in Austin and I'm really sick of the Uber/Lyft propaganda machines. All they're doing is spending their VC money on lobbying and lawyers to mold communities in their image rather than trying to develop a service that actually works with the communities they serve (seriously: they spent $9MM trying to influence a local election. What a waste of some investor's money.) Uber is just a grand VC experiment in seeing how they can run illegal businesses and force laws to change for them. They tried it in health (23andMe, Therenos) and found the FDA to be a formidable opponent and instead went after an unpopular industry (taxis) to develop their playbook. Once they work out the playbook with taxis, they'll go after other regulated industries.
Remember, Uber and Lyft were not forced out of Austin. They simply left because they didn't want to play by the rules. They could have stayed. What's exciting is that the market is working and a whole new crop of TNCs are evolving in Austin that are willing to work with the community rather than against it.
And don't get me wrong, I love the idea of TNCs. They're great services, they just need to play by the same rules as everyone else and when those rules don't seem to be right, work with the community to find ones that do (compromise is part of that). Right now, Uber and Lyft are just acting like that spoiled rich kid you knew growing up who was never held accountable for his actions.
-Chris
Drunk driving IS a serious crime that kills people. Unfortunately the ridiculously low blood alcohol limits thanks to disgusting organizations like MADD result in arrests of people nowhere near the levels that actually cause accidents. That and the definition of 'alcohol related accident' meaning ANY person involved having a measurable amount of alcohol (including passengers and pedestrians) leads to the inflating of numbers and 'proof' that we need even stupider laws.
Fact: accident and injuries caused by driver impairment happen at levels around .15 and that number has not changed no matter what they've done with the laws. The people you need to be worried about are habitual drunks who have no regard for anything, and that's another thing that laws and checkpoints and other modern bullshit does not change.
So I at least won't joke about actual DUI but I will joke about the laws, and I will insult at every opportunity the profiteering and ruining of countless lives for no reason by our 'justice' system.
Proof that the local government doesn't care about public safety but they do care about their budgets. Can't make their bottom line without DUI convictions and seized vehicles.
The whole purpose of the referendum was to demand that these companies do background checks for "public safety" you fucking twit. No one forced them to leave, they weren't able to get their way and out of fear that it would set a precedent which would impact their bottom line they chose to leave. If you are mad, that anger should be directed squarely at them. Arcade City is violating a law that the People of Austin voted for, so I do not fault the police for enforcing the will of the people. The increase in DUIs is unfortunate, but the city can not be responsible for the irresponsible decisions that people make while under the influence of alcohol that places the safety of others at risk.
I live in Austin and many smaller TNCs have moved into the city to fill the market need, and these TNCs are willing to comply with the city ordinances.
At voir dire you must never admit to being an advocate of jury nullification, even though it's a power you have as a juror. If you exercise it in a given trial, always have some interpretation of the evidence and testimony, however strained, to use as an excuse. You have the right to be as tricky as the prosecutor is at interpreting the case.
Fact: accident and injuries caused by driver impairment happen at levels around .15 and that number has not changed no matter what they've done with the laws. The people you need to be worried about are habitual drunks who have no regard for anything, and that's another thing that laws and checkpoints and other modern bullshit does not change.
Uh, NO.
There's no "magic switch" that happens after your blood alcohol level goes above 0.15. It's a gradual ramp upward of increased risk of accident, beginning somewhere around 0.05, based on a number of studies.
By the time you reach 0.08 (the threshold of many municipalities), you're at somewhere between twice the risk and 7 times the risk of a sober person of causing an accident. (Different studies come up with different figures, but there's a clear and significant relationship.) By the time you get up to your proposed limit of 0.15, you're up to about 25 times greater chance of causing an accident than a sober person.
It *is* true that the *majority* of drunk-driving accidents are caused by people who are significantly impaired, something like 75% of them by people with 0.15 and up. But that still leaves a significant number of people below your threshold who cause accidents.
So I at least won't joke about actual DUI but I will joke about the laws, and I will insult at every opportunity the profiteering and ruining of countless lives for no reason by our 'justice' system.
There are obviously screwed up aspects of drunk-driving laws, as there are with most things. But your assumptions ("FACT") are NOT true. Even a couple of drinks is often enough to begin to impact your driving abilities, and if you're driving over the limit (whether 0.08 or 0.1 or whatever), you ARE at significantly greater risk of causing an accident than a sober person.
Be responsible. Stop kidding yourself and saying, "Yeah I'm okay to drive" when you've had 5 or 6 beers (which is what it takes for a typical adult male of average weight to get to around 0.15). I can't believe any mods have modded this up as "informative."
Respectfully, you're an uninformed asshat and your alleged facts are actually total BS! "Oh the laws are too strict, those 'habitual drunks' are the real problem, not people like ME who can _handle_ it..."
Tell that to my children's favorite uncle. Oh wait, you can't because he was killed by another self-justifying jackass who also thought he could "handle it" (and by the way, is now rotting in jail, exactly where he should be; short of being in a coffin instead of his innocent victim (who happened to be a first-responder but won't be saving any more lives now) being in one).
Here is how they ACTUALLY determine the official statistics: "Drivers are considered to be alcohol-impaired when their blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) are .08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or higher. Thus, any fatal crash involving a driver with a BAC of .08 g/dL or higher is considered to be an alcohol-impaired-driving crash, and fatalities occurring in those crashes are considered to be alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities." Source NHTSA Dec 2015. Of course there are always people who spin the statistics, just like there are with gun death numbers that count suicides, police killing actual criminals who are in the process of committing a violent crime, self defense killings of assailants by assault victims, etc.
NOT passengers, NOT "having a measurable amount of alcohol;" strictly the person actually driving a vehicle and only BAC >=.08, period. .08+ BAC, including passengers killed in the drunk driver's car, drivers and passengers killed in other cars as a result of the accident, and pedestrians and cyclists killed as a result of the accident. You'd have to be a complete moron to exclude those deaths though. For 2014, that's 9,964 people dead in the US, and without even including those killed in accidents with buzzed/tipsy drivers at .01-.079. That's more than all the gun homicides, including mass shootings, which attract so much attention.
Obviously in deaths they do count everyone who dies as a result of an accident with a driver having a
Crashes do often peak around .14 - .16, but there'a s statistically significant increase even at 0.01, and at levels much higher than .16, people start to become less likely to even be able to operate the vehicle, thus less likely to cause fatal accidents for that reason alone. Most states set the .08 level as a reasonable compromise between any detectable alcohol and completely plastered. They can be reasonably sure you drank enough to be willfully disobeying the law, and enough to be measurably impaired. The bottom line is, don't drink (at all) and drive. Current laws are NOT too strict. Stop listening to the DUI-apologists cherry picked and spun statistics. Frankly I'd like to see vehicle forfeiture on first conviction. Not your car? Too bad, work that out with the person who let you use it to drink and drive, unless it was actually reported stolen, in which case you can take the felony car theft charge too.
This might be news to you, but people who do not drink and drive, at all, do not get convicted of DUIs, and have their "lives ruined," period. It's not some mystical made up law that everyone is guilty of, just to give cops an excuse to stop you, it's something you have to do deliberately. In contrast, people who do not drink and drive, at all, DO still get killed by drunk drivers!
You can take your "no reason" and shove it up your ass! You sound like an 'effin DUI defense attorney who advertises their slimy services on TV; "just pay us enough money and you won't have to take responsibility for your own poor choices."