High fares and no lawful alternative

I wanted an app that was democratic and within the law, useful to the public and to drivers. The starting point was studying Uber’s model, and the conclusion arrived sooner than expected: it did not stand up economically, and on top of that it did not meet a number of legal obligations.

So the decision was to build on it the other way round. I did not read the Swiss judgment that went against Uber as a news item: I used it as a list of requirements, point by point, and every point became a rule of the product.

That is where the two choices that still hold today come from. Every driver sets their own fares, and every driver takes the cost of the journey from the passenger. These are not concessions to the trade: they follow from a fact, which is that a driver is a self-employed professional.

An app should be a tool, not an algorithm that decides.