"Operators must not show vehicles being available for immediate hire, either visibly or virtually.."

[Nye Bevan]

Operators must not show vehicles being available for immediate hire, either visibly or virtually via an app...

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/tph/private-hire-proposals/user_uploads/private-hire-proposals-sept-2015-final.pdf

.... just one of the proposed new "private hire vehicle regulations" being suggested by the transportation regulator (TFL) in London.

Gee! I wonder who they had in mind when they wrote this proposal! Anyone here got a defense for this? Who has been vastly inconvenienced or had their personal safety put in danger by an app showing where the nearest available vehicles for hire are?

This proposal would have made one of the actual, original Luddites blush with shame.

[leveymg]

1. Who is endangered? Licensed taxi drivers.

Uber is just another step toward unemployment for everyone except bankers.

[Nye Bevan]

2. Here's a crazy idea.

If legacy cab drivers are being threatened by someone else having a really convenient app that shows the nearby available vehicles, how about developing such an app themselves so that they can also offer this same convenience? Instead of pushing for a law that prohibits anyone from offering such a useful feature?

[Bluenorthwest]

4. It does not prevent ANYONE from doing to, read the proposal, which includes standards for

security in Apps used for booking and therefore very obviously do not prohibit their use. The point is that you can't pretend to be a licensed cab available to be hailed, not that you can't use an App.

[leveymg]

5. Here's an equally good idea.

Let's let anyone call themselves a MP, chartered accountant, Barrister or Royal and let the Market sort it all out. May the best app win.

[Nye Bevan]

7. Or at least ban chartered accountants firms from offering an app

showing where their nearby offices are located. Gotta stop this new-fangled "app" nonsense.

[leveymg]

8. I'm the Queen Mother and here's the app to prove it.

Now pay me peon.

[Nye Bevan]

9. Great analogy.

Thanks.

[Recursion]

10. No, the drivers can still drive for Uber, and will usually make more money

Who's endangered here is taxi license owners (in London as in other big cities, medallions are so expensive and owner-operators so rare that the commission has to specifically carve aside a few cheap medallions for owner-operators to continue the fig leaf that that's how the industry works).

[Bluenorthwest]

3. I don't think you understand the regulation being proposed, it is not 'anti App' it's anti Uber

Nothing 'luddite' about it at all.

[Nye Bevan]

6. Really? I must have missed the part of the regulation that targeted Uber by name.

My apologies. I read the rule as preventing any private hire operator, not just Uber, from offering such a feature.

The perils of posting when it's late.

On edit: I'm feeling really dumb but I still can't find the text that specifies that this regulation only applies to Uber! Can you help me find it?

[1939]

11. A fig leaf

You target a law either advantaging or disadvantaging a special interest group but word it in such a way that it meets its goal without mentioning the group.

[Nye Bevan]

12. Kick