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Equal Rights Center Sues Uber For Denying Equal Access To People Who Use Wheelchairs (techcrunch.com)
The Equal Rights Center is suing Uber, alleging that the company has chosen not to include wheelchair-accessible cars as an option in its standard UberX fleet of vehicles, and excludes people who use wheelchairs in Washington, D.C. According to the lawsuit, Uber is in violation of Title 3 of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the D.C. Human Rights Act. TechCrunch reports: After conducting its own investigation of Uber's services for people in wheelchairs, the ERC found that passengers had to wait an average of eight times longer for an accessible car to arrive. They also had to pay twice as much in fares, according to the ERC's study. Ultimately, the ERC wants Uber to integrate wheelchair accessible cars into its UberX fleet so that people who use wheelchairs don't have to wait longer and pay more to use the car service. Uber said in a statement provided to TechCrunch: "We take this issue seriously and are committed to continued work with the District, our partners, and stakeholders toward expanding transportation options and freedom of movement for all residents throughout the region."
I want 7 billion dollars from Uber, NOW! Lawyer, get me that money!
There aren't enough empty spaces at the grocery store. We need more.
And where are the jetpacks and air cars for wheelchair people. That's discrimination.
Let's just cripple all people so we'll be equal. Harrison Bergeron style.
...being forced to live in the world they created is so entertaining.
It's supposed to be ride sharing not buy a ride of a certain type to share so the parent company can meet a quota
I'm all for helping those with a disability have as a normal life but this is just a bit too far for me..
And I hate uber for their business tactics
Perhaps someone can sue eBay; surely there aren't enough eBay sellers selling wheelchairs. Hell, sue the car manufacturers; not enough people are buying wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Sue the government! Wheelchair-accessible vehicles should have been mandated by law.
I think there are still too many jobs left in the USA, more jobs must go somewhere else. More jobs need to leave the country that punishes people for building businesses that is my opinion.
In my *NOT SO HUMBLE OPINION* all of this government oppression that allows somebody with a disability to sue a company for not providing that person with some extra entitlements that other customers do not receive. This is government oppression, this is violation of property rights, this is theft and economic destruction.
Jobs and businesses in general need to leave and go some place where people who start businesses are not treated as fucking second class citizens because they start a business.
There shouldn't be any income or wealth taxes, there shouldn't be any idiotic ideas about providing people with disabilities with entitlements at the expense of the businesses that are doing whatever they can but not necessarily catering to a particular segment of the population.
I should be within my full rights to start a company catering specifically to women or specifically to men or specifically to children or specifically to people without disabilities or specifically to people with disabilities or any mix of the above. People of any specific age or race or colour or culture or language, etc., anybody should be able to start a company catering to a specific subset of people. Catering to gays, catering to not gays, catering to people who only have any one arm and their left ear but not necessarily people with both ears.
Government creates these entitlements that destroy any ability and even desire to do business in such environment.
You can't handle the truth.
Curb cuts, ramps, accessible stalls, or my favorite, Section 508. The hubris of the ADA was that we could afford this colossal waste. Meanwhile, the economic participation of disabled workers has dropped by 50% since 1981. The implication being that the huge expenditure on infrastructure was a waste, since almost half preferred being on the dole and not taking advantage of the infrastructure.
The next time I see someone with a wheelchair using one of the curb cuts in my town, will be the first.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I'm not posting sarcastically. The market will address this. Or government feel-good programs. We spend ridiculous amounts of money to accommodate handicaps because we believe the word "handicap" is evil, yet we make no special accommodations for, e.g., stupid people. I sympathize with the differently-abled -- I really and truly do! -- but the economic well-being of an Uber driver trumps your claim to universal access to someone else's private property. By being a dick and suing, you're ruining someone's life. And face it, someone making a living from Uber is just as disadvantaged as you, otherwise he'd be an engineer or marketing executive or doctor or something (allowing that some people really do just like to be Uber drivers, or are earning "extra" money). By complaining about equal access, you're fucking up someone's life.
--Jim (me)
Uber is dependent on people using their own cars. Most people don't have wheelchair accessible cars, and those who do aren't likely to be willing to use that vehicle to drive some random stranger around.
If the Equal Rights Center is that upset, perhaps they can provide vehicles and drivers and create their own service instead of pointing fingers and filing lawsuits.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
Call out the SJW ADA brigade!
The ERC should sue the entire world for not being hand-accessible!
I mean, it really isn't - mountains, rivers, beaches - all that crap should be mandated to be accessible.
It's almost like being handicapped sucks, and means you can't do most of the things un-handicapped people can do.
-Styopa
Taxi licenses and monied interests are the reason why Uber is being shat on from a great height.
I mean it was possible that some of the shit they've gotten was deserved, but if they keep getting yet more whooshed goalposts of what they're mandated to do, that option rapidly disappears.
And if a car cannot physically take a wheelchair user then it's not Uber or the person not employed by Uber in a non-specifically-designed car used in a not-specifically-requested request pick-up fault that the ride was not able to complete.
If I book a "real taxi" then if I do not point out how many people there are or the need for wheelchair access, then the taxi company can be completely exonerated of any wrongdoing if they turn up with a vehicle that cannot take on the commission, because the fault would be mine. Meanwhile if I DO state the specific needs and they turn up without suitable transport, they ARE culpable for failing to supply the contracted service. And I'm pretty sure that the Yellow Cab style taxis would not be faulted for being non-wheelchair-friendly, because that is the format of the vehicle they use. And that transport of the disabled like this is done by different formatted cabs that re minivan or similar (even bespoke) configuration.
But if it's Uber, suddenly they have to make everyone who signs up to be notified of a pickup on the off-chance that they can take it, has a vehicle that is far more general purpose for public transport than even the fucking public transport they replace???
No, that's when it becomes clear this is an attempt to shut down competition for the entrenched power base and the cash injection to the city that selling the franchises provide.
A van with a wheel chair lift and suitable harness is about $50k ($35k van + $15k conversion). And it gets terrible gas mileage. So if I were to use my sister's wheelchair-accessible van for Uber, I would realistically have to charge significantly more before I could even break even. Since Uber sets the prices and drivers voluntarily accept the price, there is nothing I can do. And since Uber would get their pants sued off them if they charged 2x for a wheelchair van, there is not much Uber can do either.
If on the other hand the government or charities were willing to compensate wheelchair accessible van drivers on top of what Uber already pays, that would be something very interesting. Of course ADA only provides a way to sue businesses who do not comply with draconian rules, the Act does not offer any solutions to the problems that handicapped people face.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We hate Uber and want it shut down for it's illegal misclassification of workers and want expanded public transportation systems with full accessibility. We're the ones that pushed for those laws in the first place. We're perfectly OK with living in that world? If you're gonna troll can you please put a little more effort into it?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The Market wasn't addressing it, that's why there's a law. It wasn't worth the cost. And we aren't fucking up anyone's life. The costs were minimal and affordable. Mostly making bathrooms accessible and adding ramps. They went down even more as new buildings made them standard. But it's still a cost, and if you're a big corp that money could buy the owner their third or fourth summer home. I guess if only having two or three summer homes counts as a fucked up life, well, sign me the hell up for a fucked up life.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
of Uber being an illegal taxi company. You don't get to say "We're an app!" and get out of complying with laws. If you did we'd be a lawless society.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
perhaps intentionally. The point is they have a right to take part in society. Mountains and Rivers aren't society. Public Transportation is.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The problem is, if they lift the regulation for Uber, then they need to lift the regulation for all transportation companies so that they can compete on an even playing field. Then it is questionable whether there will be enough services that remain.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Uber rolled out Uber WAV 2 years back that allows you to use their app to connect with Taxi companies that offer wheel chair service.
https://www.uber.com/blog/wash...
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
This is the world the RIGHTWING created. Sure, some leftwingers complained, but they didn't have power. The right wing did. They created this world, this scenario.
FFS, even if you were insane enough to think that the democrats were left wing, it's been fairly close 50:50 left:right, and both have created this world.
But because you're fucking butthurt and retarded due to bigoted blind political ideology, you "think" (if such a word could be used) that this was all done by leftists.
WHO THE FUCK WAS SHRUB, RETARD?!?!?
PS I also posted "@07:58PM (#54708873) " and like to add to that because I can't edit and it is just as germane here: this is not a complaint by "SJW"s, but brought about by taxi companies and the sellers of the licenses to shut down Uber, and those are, if anything, rightwing, conservative corporatist entities. This situation is created by the right wing, and this event is CAUSED by the rightwing. There's fuck all left wing in this scenario. It isn't even ADA's fault, since laws are written for sane rational people, not lunatics or the criminally greedy assfucks who will search and search until they find a way to use and abuse the law to their ends. And for them, if it hadn't been possible to do it with ADA, they'd have found some other rule or law or nit pick to make it about.
ADA needs to be completely repealed. It is a massive drain on businesses and nothing but a lawsuit mine for lawyers. If a business doesn't serve you as a disabled person, go elsewhere or make a request to the business... Most businesses are happy to make reasonable accommodations but the ADA puts a gun to their heads about it and lets stupid stuff like this Uber suit run rampant...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I think it's perfectly fine for society to decide to pay for special services for the handicapped. But politicians are cowards, so instead of paying for the cost of providing these services out of the general fund and raising taxes on everybody, they impose regulations; it seems so harmless: just tell people to run their business a bit differently and be nice to those poor suffering people with disabilities.
But here is absolutely no logical reason why transportation companies should bear the full cost of making provisions to transport people in wheelchairs. The decision to provide these services to people with disabilities is something the entire nation has made, so the entire nation should pay for it, out of taxes.
But, of course, it's not just politicians that like to hide taxes via regulations, many of the companies being regulated like it too: they pass on the costs to their customers (as a consumption tax, mostly hurting lower income people), while at the same time creating massive barriers to entry for competitors. And that's what you're seeing with this attack on Uber: once you start down the path of illogical and unfair regulations, they take on a life of their own and spiral out of control.
The ADA is like a forced subsidy. The market won't address it, because there's not enough handicapped people for it to be profitable to cater to them (and they probably tend to be low income, too). The incentive is to not get sued, not to help handicapped people.
Since a forced subsidy is like a tax, why not just have a direct tax and use the tax money to provide positive incentives to provide rides to the handicapped? At least this way, helping handicapped people is profitable and provides a direct incentive to do so. The "negative incentive" of being sued just becomes something people try to avoid or cheat on.
The ADA outsources the cost of accommodation to private entities *and* the cost of enforcement to handicapped people who have to file lawsuits to get meaningful enforcement. It ends up being a subsidy to trial lawyers.
What isn't questionable that by keeping the regulations, existing transportation companies have created massive barriers to entry and are forcing existing riders to pay inflated prices in order to support those with disabilities. In addition, those regulations are a hidden, regressive form of taxation.
There is no logical reason why someone running a bus company or a taxi company should have to pay for services to the disabled; if we want to support the disabled with subsidized transportation, then we should pay for that out of tax dollars directly. Once we do that, your logic ("if they lift the regulations for Uber, then...") evaporates.
"My driver can't understand sign language, I want money. My barista won't take bitcoin, I want a few millions US dollars. My laptop doesn't have braille built into it, I want a payout."
There are plenty of things in what we like to call the "real world" that don't support everyone under the sun. Companies can't realistically service every possible individual, at least not in a cost effective way. While they should take reasonable steps to do so, adding a $10-20k device to a bunch of vehicles to service a handful of people on occasion isn't that.
Taxi services are not required to provide wheel chair accessibility in their cars, nor are limousine services. It is an unnecessary regulatory burden on those services to create such a regulation. This is yet another example of shit lawyers attempting to steal money. California has some very despicable lawyers who make their living by putting people out of business with bogus ADA lawsuits. http://www.adaabuse.com/
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So you want the disabled to pay for 'premium' services, while most of them cannot work and are just trying to get by. The government can't pay for it, because so many complain when their taxes go up or are used for a service that has no value to them. Charities are ill-equipped to run a full transport operation. So America turns their backs on these people. Pathetic.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Not every service is compatible for every person
But they are paying for it, and in a very inefficient and regressive way. The fact that people like you are either too dumb to figure that out or deliberately lie to the American people about that doesn't change the economic facts.
No, I want tax payers to continue to pay for it, just more efficiently, more fairly, and more accountably. And preferably in a way that doesn't hurt the disabled, which is what ADA actually has done.
So I cant stand uber.... But.... I cant stand cucks ruining free educational videos for the "disabled".... Now they are doing the same for uber... This shit is getting ridiculous.
They're suing a private company for charging more to use a low-demand, high cost service?
Wheel chair accessible vehicles cost more to buy, more to maintain and cost more to run (assuming a typical van outfitted with wheel chair ramps uses more fuel and an an average car).
I'm all for accessibility, but you have to be reasonable. Wheel chair conversions cost between $10k and $20k according to 1800wheelchair.com. On top of that you have to buy a big van and you lose the passenger capacity advantage a van has.
Uber is running a de facto taxi service via their own car fleet, so Uber should be held responsible to society. If Uber were smart, they would avoid the cost of compliance by ordering a proper taxi for such customers.
The big question is: What happens when transport exists only in the gig economy? A single 'contractor' can't afford to install a wheelchair ramp when he doesn't get a fixed percentage of the fare.
I don't see wheelchair ramps on the taxi's in my cities. What do disabled people do there?
are you sure? In Orlando,Fl taxi companies are required to have a certain % of their fleet wheelchair accessible. London it's 100%.
ok, i was wrong, contest of being stupid this week, get to whole new level
Our local taxi companies "outsource" requests for a wheel-chair accessible vehicle by putting the booking through to single a company which has wheelchair-accessible vehicles. This is evidently good enough to comply with the UK disability legislation. I guess (but don't know) that they have to charge the customer the same rate that they would have been charged by the original company, so maybe the local companies have to pay something to the company with wheelchair accessible vehicles, who will often have to travel further to pick up the customer, will have higher vehicle overheads, etc.
I can see this on city buses/subways, etc....but NOT on taxis (which don't meet this requirement either) or Uber.
It is an unnecessary regulatory burden
Who decides that?
Seems like society has a whole has decided that the burden of having disabled people unable to use public transport is greater than the relatively small burden to taxi companies to provide a few accessible vehicles. If the taxi company disagrees it can go somewhere else, but it won't because the cost is relatively small (the vehicle modifications are not expensive and often subsidised anyway).
This is just another example of Uber trying to dodge the laws that all other taxi companies have to play by.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And that's a bespoke fleet with many perks. AFAIK, Uber and similar do not get to use the taxi rank unless that specific driver has bought the license to do so and basically registered as a taxi driver AS A FULL JOB.
Why do you hate handicapped people?
The right to call someone else.
How would Uber meet any standard that might be imposed by the courts? UberX drivers use their own cars to transport passengers. Is Uber going to pay for people to buy new cars/vans or upgrade their current transportation? Uber drivers are independent contractors, not employees. Any goal to provide X number of accessible vehicles would be unrealistic.
"Politicians always tell the truth, when they're calling each other liars."
Racism, sexism, homophobia, hyper-exploitative work practices, wage theft, fraud, now the disabled. Wow, big gubbermint creates all this red tape, rules and regulations that stop job creators from innovating. /End sarcasm
Why do disabled people *need* to use this particular service? As long as the municipality provides some kind of accessible transportation service, isn't that good enough? Are disabled people entitled to access to every kind of service out there?
For instance, look at rickshaws. In a lot of US cities, you can hire some guy who's peddling a little 3-wheel contraption to take you and your date around the city, perhaps from a far-away parking lot into a trendy urban district where there's no inexpensive (or maybe available) parking. These rickshaws do especially well during special events when the traffic is high and maybe streets are blocked off. There's no way that a rickshaw is wheelchair-accessible. Are you saying this option simply shouldn't exist?
What about horse-drawn carriages? In many cities, you can hire these too. There's obviously no way a wheelchair is getting in one of those. Should these all be illegal?
What about canoes and kayaks? In NYC's Central Park, you can stand in line and rent a canoe by the hour, and paddle around the big lake in the park. I think it's pretty obvious that canoes are not in any way wheelchair-accessible. Should rental canoes and kayaks be banned?
For Uber, remember that Uber is not like a traditional taxi company: it doesn't own any vehicles. The vehicles are owned by the drivers. So how is Uber supposed to make sure that drivers buy special wheelchair-accessible vans? And for them to have completely identical service times, that means that ALL their vehicles have to be this way. Do the existing taxi companies even do this? I don't think so. If you have to wait longer to get a wheelchair van from the taxi company, then they're not meeting this requirement either.
If Uber wanted to run rickshaws, horse-drawn carriages, canoes and kayaks then I'm sure they would get an exemption for those modes of transportation. As it turns out, automobile transportation tends to be a lot more important in terms of city planning, so that is what the rules are around. Uber is an automobile transportation company so must follow the same rules as other automobile transportation companies in the sense of fairness. It's up to Uber how they make their business model work with the market, and if they were allowed to use 'we don't own cars' as an excuse, after seeing the break Uber gets, all the other companies would find excuses in order to compete on even footing and we would be back to square one anyway.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Maybe the other car-based companies should be excluded from this silly law then too. If transportation for wheelchair-bound people (who don't have their own car for some reason) is a problem, I think it'd be a lot cheaper for the city to just supply their own special wheelchair vans, on call just for these people, than to require ever car-based private business to cater to them.
What about black cars? Are limo companies required to also cater to wheelchair users? I don't think so. I've never seen a limo or a town car that was set up for wheelchairs. So why should Uber be different? Uber is really, fundamentally, an app company that coordinates black-car livery service; the cab companies are just mad because they got the cost of black-car service *below* the cost of cabs. But part of that can be blamed on the government and its onerous regulation, such as requiring wheelchair service, and also limiting the number of cabs artificially. Get rid of that stuff and the costs will come down. And for the wheelchair users, just provide them special government-provided van service either for free or for no more than bus fare. That's supposed to be the whole job of government here, after all: to provide for people who fall through the cracks. You can even pay for this service with a special tax on transportation, so that both Uber/Lyft and the cab companies and the other black-car and limo livery companies ALL have to chip in and pay for it, rather than requiring them to mess around with buying their own vans and dealing with that.
Seems like society has a whole has decided that the burden of having disabled people unable to use public transport is greater than the relatively small burden to taxi companies to provide a few accessible vehicles.
Well there is a mighty big flaw in your logic isn't there? Uber is not a tax payer funded public transportation system. Nor it it a Taxi service bound by the same regulations. Uber and Lyft are both free market responses to an overtly corrupt system. Good for them!
Have any doubts, go try to start a cab company. If you don't like that idea, go find out how many payouts you need to make to get a medallion for any of those same corrupted Taxi companies in NYC, LA, etc...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Uber operates in our society under our rules at our pleasure. We get to decide what its obligations are regarding things like tax, safety and disabled users.
If they disagree that's fine, they can fuck off and stop using our roads. I'm sure the market will build some for them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
i don't mind if government (you call it society) decides to pay for all cars and all buildings to have accessibility features (or to pay from federal budget to all people building or driving to add accessibility futures to their vehicles) , i even think they should do that because its part of what i call social services,
but they should pay for that to be added not ask for company or person to pay for that, because if TAXI company or building will raise its prices for renting cars or flats or office space, it is form of indirect tax, i want government to pay that from (direct) taxes i already pay like sales tax, import duty, salary tax, indirect tax is EVIL because i cannot see it and thus cannot control it or refuse to pay it if i disagree
Uber operates in our society under our rules at our pleasure. We get to decide what its obligations are regarding things like tax, safety and disabled users.
If they disagree that's fine, they can fuck off and stop using our roads. I'm sure the market will build some for them.
We (Society) did give them money and allow the to operate. Society sanctioned them without issue. YOU on the other hand differ from society and wish to have control over other people, or give that control to people YOU like and who YOU believe acts in YOUR interests, not caring if Society benefits at all.
You are an authoritarian, and promote authoritarianism. The US is not supposed to be such a system, and by our Constitution should protect Society from people like you. If you enjoy authoritarianism so much, GTFO and live in one!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.