← Back to context

Comment by Shank

18 hours ago

> I live in Tokyo

I also live in Tokyo and surely you’re not expecting Japanese taxi standards to be remotely comparable to US Uber or Lyft, right? It’s a race to the bottom in any major US metro. Japanese taxis are refined and designed around passenger comfort. There is a specific model of car for Taxis. In the US you’re rolling the dice on what Uber or Lyft offer.

I'm not from the US, I'm from Spain and while they are better in Japan than in Spain, it's not like the "out-of-world" difference that I'm seeing in these comments. That's why I'm confused, I expected the US to be similar to Europe in these regards. I have taken Uber a couple of times while traveling to the US (long ago though), and while they were dirtier than in other countries it wasn't that bad as the comments suggest.

So either things have gone dramatically downhill or I had a "good" experience in my brief US rides relatively speaking.

As a non-American, I am not sure why it's so crazy to think standards would be high in other countries? Grab standards and quality in e.g. Taiwan, Thailand, etc IS within the same order of magnitude as Japan and those are much poorer countries than the US.