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April 12th, 2013 
Peter Nolan 
(Credit:
Uber)
Uber announced today that it plans to start ridesharing services where other companies, like Lyft and Sidecar, have already tested the waters.
The company has not said when it would start rolling out these services.
Lawmakers have had mixed reactions to ridesharing services, which allows any person with a
car, and insurance, to act as a taxi service through the assistance of an app. Sidecar said it has received cease and desist letters in Austin, Philadelphia and San Francisco. The kerfuffle has even lead to at least one lawsuit.
Uber, which takes plenty of heat from regulators already, said it will only go into the markets “where the regulators have tacitly approved doing so.” Uber defines that as any place where “a competitor is operating for 30 days without direct enforcement against transportation providers.”
The company has identified New York, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and California, as states where officials are not aggressively enforcing regulations:
To their credit, the lack of enforcement shows at least some embrace of this kind of transportation innovation. But the lack of real clarity has created massive regulatory ambiguity. Without clear guidance or enforcement, this ambiguity has led to one-sided competition in which Uber has not engaged to its own disadvantage. It is this ambiguity which we are looking to address with Uber’s new policy on ridesharing.
Uber said it will tack an insurance policy of a minimum of $2 million to ridesharing trips, and promises to do background checks on drivers.
Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/tcoc/~3/cOrn_Z8Bo-4/
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