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Uber's Ad-Toting Drones Are Heckling Drivers Stuck in Traffic (technologyreview.com)
Drivers stuck in traffic in Mexico city are lately seeing a fleet of sign-toting drones buzzing at them, saying (in Spanish) "Driving by yourself? This is why you can never see the volcanoes." (It's a reference to the smog that often hovers over the city and obscures two nearby peaks.) Turns out, it's an ad for UberPOOL, part of Uber's big push into markets across Latin America. From an MIT Technology Review article: Uber already does more business in Mexico City than any other city it operates in, and Brazil is its third-largest market after the U.S. and India. Uber sees Latin American countries as generally easier targets for expansion than either of its top two markets.Umm, I get that Uber has self-driving cars now in Pittsburgh, but they don't fly (at least as of now). So wouldn't they be stuck in the traffic as well?
Until now I thought those people who shot down drones were luddites and assholes. If a drone advertises at me I will use every engineering skill in my toolkit to take those bastards down. And I don't mean knock it out of the sky. But send it back to its base with malware that will fly the entire fleet into the ocean.
If you drive to work and park your car there, then drive home that evening, your car only has to drive to and from work. If you call Uber for a pickup. someone (or something) drives a vehicle to you and then takes you to where you want to go. It then drives to the next pick-up, which during morning rush hour is more likely than not another commute from the suburbs into the city. At the end of the day the car with no paying customer makes another trip "home". Overall it isn't hard to see that the more Uber cars there are on the road replacing private cars, the more total miles will be driven and the worse traffic will be.
You might say to you could reduce the total miles driven with Uber if rides were shared, although that would add inconvenience and lengthen the trip for most people. But you can ride-pool already if you are so inclined, so there seems to be no good reason to use Uber if the goal is to reduce traffic and time wasted in traffic.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Uber never misses an opportunity to come of like a bunch of insufferable assholes, do they?
What are you talking about? Is UberPOOL different in Mexico City? In SF, UberPOOL is just another mode of UberX. Same drivers, same cars. UberPOOL is a dynamic ridesharing system because the app basically finds other people on the same route when you request a ride. It's not set up in advance, and the driver doesn't set the destination. It's not like a carpool to work, it's more like sharing a taxi.
UberPOOL drivers aren't typically driving to work, they're at work. I think the point of the ads is that if you have 2-4 riders (not including the driver) in each car, then the number of cars on the road should go down, reducing congestion and pollution. Of course, making access to anything cheap and fast tends to drive up the usage, so it may actually end up with more people taking an Uber rather than walking or taking a bus.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.