Uber's Ad-Toting Drones Are Heckling Drivers Stuck in Traffic

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?

Drones are advertising in Mexico?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a country!

In Capitalist America, we advetise to the drones!

stupid questions for stupid customers

[frovingslosh]

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.

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[Dahamma]

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

Not sure you get how Uber works...

I know a bunch of Uber drivers, and based on the way the app works they tend to find a new passenger close to them after dropping off a fare. They may make less going in the opposite direction, or they may have to hang around "downtown" for a while doing shorter trips until they get one that is going where they want - but any Uber driver who actually makes a living on it knows the system and how to maximize their income over time. NO ONE would drive all the way back to "t

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[frovingslosh]

I really doubt if the majority of Uber drivers will be able to catch drives close to where they discharged their last passenger and will not go after another rush hour fare. But it really doesn't matter, the logic still holds. Even if they make short trips to pick up all of their fares, An Uber driver still represents more miles and time spent in traffic than the miles and time if their fares all drove themselves. So taking Uber increases traffic and traffic delays, it does not reduce them as Uber wants to

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[Dahamma]

Did you not rate them? It's rare that a driver will rate you down unless you either rate them down or are a total asshole to them, since they know you'll do the same.

The ending comment

[Calydor]

Please do a bit of quick math.

If each car stuck in traffic has one person in it, and Uber can cram just two people into each car, there would - theoretically - be half as many cars on the road at that given point in time, which would likely help to seriously reduce traffic congestion.

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[bhcompy]

Only if you have 3 people in the car, as one of them is a driver by default and not a commuter. Makes sense for UberPool(where the driver is theoretically also a commuter), but not UberX. The problem with UberPool is they never fucking go where you need them to

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[GuB-42]

Real ridesharing/carpooling is popular in Europe. The market is mostly taken by Blablacar. Uber, which mostly market its high end offers, is not as popular by comparison.

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[Dahamma]

It's a shame, because my Uber experiences in Europe were fantastic. The cars were spotless (a BMW 535 and a Merc C63 AMG!), the drivers eminently polite, and the rates cheaper than in the US.

I guess it's not the same for commuting/ridesharing, where you don't want to pay taxi prices... but for a tourist trying to get around it was perfect ;)

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[GNious]

but but but ... Uber is a ride-sharing thing, not a taxi thing, so there's no driver, just 2 or more people who happen to be going the same way, and one of them is getting paid for letting the other one sit in his/her car.

*cough*cough*

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[lxs]

We have a similar bed-sharing thing around here.

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[Dahamma]

Only if you have 3 people in the car, as one of them is a driver by default and not a commuter. Makes sense for UberPool(where the driver is theoretically also a commuter),

And you didn't even have to RTFA to know that this WAS an ad for UberPOOL. Pedantic fail!

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[jopsen]

This was an ad for uberPool, but even uberX is better... you get fewer cars driving around looking for parking that isn't there, and you have more experienced drivers. Plus people are more likely to walk home during rush hours, as they aren't bound by having to get the car home somehow.

Re:The ending comment

[andymadigan]

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.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Math? Here's some math: A taxi has to drive much farther on average to get you from point A to point B than you would have to drive to make the same journey in a car you owned and kept with you. If the world magically switched overnight from privately-owned cars to some Ubertopia where GM (or whoever) owned every car in the world and rented them out by the mile, traffic congestion - and therefore trip time - would skyrocket.

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[Dahamma]

Not if they were all linked self-driving cars taking multiple passengers as appropriate. It would be a MASSIVE reduction in traffic in that case. You did mention "Ubertopia" and GM - and that IS what both of those companies are working on right now.

The ideal self-driving car future is not a bunch of Teslas taking one passenger around, it's a fleet of mini-buses (or even expanded & cost reduced Model X's, 6-8 passengers would be plenty!) that can optimize routes near-perfectly to pick up multiple passe

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[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, public transportation. Just infinitely more profitable - and environmentally destructive - than the usual manifestations. If you slap an Apple logo on a bus and rename it a SmartBus or an iBus, it's still a damn bus. And hardly anyone in America rides the bus or carpools if they can afford a car (or a taxi even). You also neglect the time that you and your iBus will spend waiting (on the street/curb, causing congestion) while the other 7 idiots you're carpooling with meander their way

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[Dahamma]

"Infinitely more profitable" already makes the argument moronic. So, infinite money? Awesome! Or nope, fucking stupid!

You clearly have not read ANY of the reasonable discourse on this topic. Large transit buses (ie all current buses, that are cheap, have set routes and carry 60+ people) vs taxis (that are expensive and usually carry 1-2 people) have nothing to do with it.

It's about automated microbuses that can carry 6-8 commuters, routing them in a way that they are WAY faster than trains/trainsit buses

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[RockDoctor]

If you work somewhere where parking is *that* bad, then you're why public transportation is a thing.

Ummm, you do remember that public transport long pre-dates private transport in almost all of the world other than rural America? No, you probably don't, being an AC. Horse-drawn omnibuses were common on the streets of most cities by the 1850s and 1860s when they started to receive competition in some areas from suburban and/ or subterranean railway lines. Around 1880-1890, appreciable numbers of people start

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[Dahamma]

Replying again since it's a totally separate point but probably more significant than my other highly significant point ;)

A taxi has to drive much farther on average to get you from point A to point B than you would have to drive to make the same journey in a car you owned and kept with you.

You must be pretty rural if you think driving is the only time/expense in a commute. In any major city, try PARKING. You can spend 30+ minutes trying to find free parking (sometimes without luck), pay $30+ to park in a garage (sometimes taking 2-3 garages to find a space), or any combination in between. None of those work out in favor of the individual private commuter.

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[Dunbal]

The problem with that is you always want to cram the other guy in a shared ride. It's never you.

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[Ichijo]

If only. What happens in real life when you take a car off an unpriced road is that it makes room for another car [slate.com], and then you're right back where you started from a congestion standpoint. (Throughput is increased, but that's a different metric.)

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[wonkey_monkey]

Why would the Uber driver have been out driving, if it wasn't to carry around the second guy?

UberPool

[ThatsMyNick]

You dont see how pooling will help with traffic/smog (without flying)?

"Wouldn't they be stuck in the traffic as well?"

[tlambert]

"Wouldn't they be stuck in the traffic as well?"

I believe the theory is that if you practice something, you get better at it. An Uber driver (presumably) practices driving, which means they get better at it, which means that they don't automatically slow down any time they see a huge ball of fire in the sky (try 101 Northbound at 4-5 PM), or other stupid things that less practiced drivers do, meaning they end up not clogging things up, like less practiced drivers tend to do.

The expression "Sunday driver" i

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[jopsen]

Also this was an add for uberPool, but not having amateur drivers looking for parking helps a lot.

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[Dahamma]

It's even simpler. UberPOOL. Every extra passenger replaces a solo driver. The difference between gridlock and flowing traffic can be 20% or less, so it's not that hard to imagine it making a significant difference...

Why is this even legal?

[ZorinLynx]

In the US we were smart enough to restrict commercial usage of drones.

Not only that, but flying over traffic causes a hazard; what if one of those drones loses power and lands on (or IN a car! convertible?) or distracts a driver causing an accident?

I'm surprised the Mexican authorities aren't all over this.

I always thought that shooting down drones was bad

[EmperorOfCanada]

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.

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[zvar]

So shooting down a drone hovering over your teen daughter sunbathing is being an asshole, but taking down a drone showing an advert is fine? Just wow. You might wanna get your priorities in order.....

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[Ogi_UnixNut]

The way things are going, people will want to shoot down drones for all sorts of reasons. Some due to adverts which will float around their person and follow them until they say whether they are interested or not (just you wait and see), others because peeping toms were trying to get some nudie shots of them/their loved ones. And people who just don't like being spied upon in some dystopian society. Not sure what the solution is. Banning drones won't work, restricting them will not work due to it being

zap

[BenBoy]

A portable, directional EMP device cannot come soon enough.

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[rwyoder]

A portable, directional EMP device cannot come soon enough.

Paintball guns are here today.[evil grin]

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[Dahamma]

They look pretty industrial, I don't think a paint pellet would do much good.

Then again, if it was *really* gridlock, low tech is the right tech. Bring a net, get out of your car, and hey, free $2000+ drone! (just make sure its camera is looking at someone else).

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[Dahamma]

If you manage to hit the camera square with a paint pellet, it already got you on camera...

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[qume]

um, or just a piece of rope

or the jumper cables in most Mexican cars

But I get it EMP is more interesting

How insufferable.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Uber never misses an opportunity to come of like a bunch of insufferable assholes, do they?

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[Dahamma]

Nope. I can't wait for their self-driving cars, they'll need and entire insufferable asshole AI department.

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[sanju baba]

Uber never misses an opportunity to come of like a bunch of insufferable assholes, do they?

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[sanju baba]

”satta matka kalyan matka tips” [slashdot.org] ”satta matka kalyan matka tips” [slashdot.org] SATTA MATKA | MATKA RESULT | KALYAN MATKA | http://t.co/8rkSzlY7PB [t.co]

So wouldn't they be stuck in the traffic as well?

[Eunuchswear]

The service they're advertising is UberPOOL. Did you even read the text you posted yourself?

"Driving by yourself? This is why you can never see the volcanoes."