The headline is not that
unexpected; and I am sure there are ‘official’ taxi drivers who commit crimes
including rape. So what is the difference?
The difference is that when a
taxi cab company hires someone or rents out a cab to someone, they have a duty
of care, they have to ensure that the driver has the credentials to drive, and
has a clean enough record to be representing the company. The passenger can
have some expectation that these checks have been put in place.
But when the transaction is one
between two individuals, when the intermediary does not purport to be
represented by any of the parties, then the intermediary has no responsibility
in the transaction. At most they simply ban one of the individuals from using
their services. And in this case, this seems to be what Uber has done; revoking
the alleged rapist’s Uber account and giving his details to the police.
So the question is: whose role
(if at all) is it to ensure that the service provider is indeed reliable, and
how easy is it to do so?
Organisations like amazon have
proposed a middle ground where service providers (sellers) are rated by past
clients and a potential client can review these ratings before engaging in the
transaction. Similarly, service providers can look up the records of the
prospective buyers. Paypal even has an arbitration system. But these are for
purely monetary transactions, not personal services.
In the case of Uber, this is much
harder; they can require more details about people who register to use their
services, including their presence/identities on social media. This would allow
buyers to quickly check-out the service providers before accepting the deal.
‘Big Data’ Analytics can be used
to rate the users of the service, based on their performance, previous
transactions, and their digital fingerprint (a bit like credit scoring). But,
especially in less developed countries, not everyone has a digital fingerprint;
the person picking you up in India might not have any internet presence.
Still there is a business
opportunity for anyone who would provide this rating service in countries where
internet usage is pervasive. But to be rated properly, individuals would have
to reveal their details, the less privacy the more accurate the rating. Hence
there should be 2 scores, one the ‘risk rating’ or rather the opposite,
reliability rating the other the degree of openness (availability/accuracy of
data).
While a service provider might
have an incentive to do so; users might not. Thinking in terms of quadrants,
the stars would be service providers in the high reliability high openness
quadrant, and low reliability and low openness members would have to work extra
hard to get customers and improve their scores.
‘Caveat Emptor’ is still a useful
guide, but in cases such as rider-sharing, both the service provider and the
user have a lot to lose; while a passenger can be robbed/raped, so can a
driver.
Update:
Simply banning Uber throwing the baby with the bath water
