Immigrants from Romania, the couple had bought their New York City taxi medallion nearly three decades ago. Lately, it had been difficult to find fares. Her husband worked 12-hour shifts, but brought home less money. He was worried about the plunging value of their once-lucrative medallion and frustrated about Uber’s takeover of the industry.
On a cold day in March, Mr. Ochisor hanged himself in his garage in Queens. His family blames the growing hopelessness he felt over his fortunes as a taxi driver.
It's a broken system. Could you imagine if you had to put up $1.3 million to be a factory worker? Money that you're still on the hook for if the factory ends up closing due to lack of demand? Charging people for the privilege of working, and somehow its Uber's fault for not protecting this corrupt and manipulative system.
In this case, Mr. Ochisor's customers were so desperate for an alternative to his three-decade-old business that they turned to a startup company that works by (literally) dodging taxi regulators. Is that really Uber's fault? The regulators'? The customers? Just how far do we want to take this whole idea of being reponsible for our competitors' mental health, or that of our vendors?
What recourse did he have? To this day government response to Uber's incursions has been mostly toothless.
I'm no friend of the taxi lobby but the guy was just trying to do right by his family up until he killed himself. While I don't see how Uber could realistically be held responsible for this guy's suicide, their undercutting his business certainly contributed to it, and you're being needlessly callous.
If you mod me down and send me into an emotional crisis, are you responsible for what I do as a result? No? Why not?
