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Uber, bowing to the taxi lobby, implements another consumer-unfriendly policy

Uber Turkey has taken a step that has drawn widespread criticism, beginning to charge a 20 TL fixed service fee as of today.

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Uber Turkey has taken a step that has drawn widespread criticism, beginning to charge a 20 TL fixed service fee as of today. The notification message sent by the company to its users regarding this matter is as follows:

“We would like to inform you about an update to our processes. Starting Monday, December 11, a fixed service fee of 20 TL will be added to the final fare for trips made via the Uber app.”

Journalist Bülent Mumay, one of the figures who brought this issue to light, reacted to the process on his X account, writing: “Uber, bowing to the taxi lobby, is once again implementing a policy against the consumer. Instead of taking a commission from taxi drivers, they will charge the consumer a 20 TL ‘service fee’ for every trip. They just made the official announcement.” This situation is generally drawing backlash, but the company is not expected to take a step back for now. 

 

The last time Uber was on our agenda was regarding an issue based abroad. For those who missed it, Uber was involved in a fatal accident in 2018 involving its self-driving test vehicle. A sentence has now been handed down to the vehicle's operator in that case. To refresh memories, one of the self-driving cars Uber was testing in 2018 struck a woman named Elaine Herzberg, who was crossing the road with a bicycle in Tempe, Arizona. The 49-year-old woman, who was seriously injured in the accident, passed away at the hospital where she was taken. This incident, which went down in history as the first fatal accident involving a self-driving car, was examined in detail by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Sharing the details it obtained, the NTSB revealed striking results. For example, on the night of the accident, Elaine Herzberg was wearing black clothing. The woman, whose bicycle also lacked reflectors, was attempting to cross in an area without street lighting. The self-driving vehicle, which detected the woman 6 seconds before the impact but identified her as an “unknown object” due to the reasons mentioned above, identified the bicycle 1.3 seconds before impact and signaled that an emergency braking maneuver was required. However, this was not activated by the system due to the “erratic behavior reduction system.”

When all these factors combined, the woman, who was found to have marijuana and methamphetamine in her system, suffered a severe impact and lost her life. This was a self-driving vehicle, but Rafaela Vasquez was inside as a test observer. So, how did the accident happen despite this? The accident occurred because Vasquez was not looking at the road as she was playing with her phone at the time of the incident. Precisely for this reason, a judge at the Maricopa Superior Court found Vasquez guilty and sentenced her to three years of probation (meaning she will not serve jail time). The National Transportation Safety Board had revealed another striking detail regarding the incident. The self-driving car used in the accident was a 2017 Volvo XC90 model. So, why did this car, which comes from the factory with many accident prevention systems, fail to detect Elaine Herzberg outside of the autonomous system? It is said that when Uber's autonomous system was engaged, Volvo's safety systems were disabled. The systems, which are only active during manual operation, were unfortunately turned off before the accident. If those systems had been active, perhaps this fatal accident would never have occurred. 

There were also those who said it cannot collect a commission from the passenger and that it is a crime: