Originally Posted by
dedhed
Yeah, I'm just going to leave my $20-$50K investment that I insure, maintain, and use in the hands of joe blow to drive and leave unsecured at the crack house he drove to.
After he used it rob a convenience store and hit a curb. But hey, we drive shared and reduced our carbon footprint
With the right insurances, it can be profitable.
Think of rental car companies: they rent out cars to people for anything. You could drive a rental car to crack houses, through mud pits, transport corpses, or whatever and you and your insurance would just get billed for the damages, which would make the rental company and its partners more money.
Really this is a big problem with modern economies, i.e. that more money can be made off destruction and waste than off sound, efficient, and prudent non-wasteful consumer/business activities; but I don't see why ride-sharing would benefit any less from such abuses than rental car companies and automakers and parts-suppliers more generally do.
The big question is for ride-share users to also share the driving, who has to own and insure the vehicles? Can it be done by individual users, or would there have to be an external company, like a rental car company or a car-share company that provides and insures the vehicles while the ride-share apps just cooridinate rides/drives among users?