I wish we could get away from the "we need regulations, because what if *this* happened!" model of legislation.
Sigh,
Is that any worse than "we need regulation because this *has now* happened.
As much as you dont want to admit it, the scenario the GP used is not a "once in a million years" event. In fact its quite likely to happen even if we remove the "hopped up on stims". Hell, just a 4 hour shift without a break is enough to produce enough fatigue that it's the equivalent of driving with a BAC above 0.08%. Now consider an 8 or 12 hour shift.
It's a simple appeal to emotion
Your logical fallacies are stereotype threat and appeal to probability.
The problem is you're dead wrong with the appeal to probability.
A rational argument might analyze not only the possibility of this happening, but also its *likelyhood*.
A rational person will analyse it. The problem you have is that the numbers dont add up for you.
The risk of having an accident is not a fixed thing, it increases with the number of hours you spend on the road. In Uber's case it also increases with the number of drivers. Ordinary transport companies have mitigation procedures to reduce this loss ranging from additional training and increased insurance to punitive measures like employment suspension and termination and in many nations professional drivers are subject to higher punitive measures than private drivers (the penalty for a truck driver speeding is 3-5x that of an ordinary driver in Australia).
Uber is not doing anything to improve the safety of its drivers, so as more drivers spend more time on the road, the likelyhood of a fatal accident becomes ever more likely. Given that Uber drivers are not professional drivers, this increases the risk significantly.
So the risk of being injured or killed by an Uber driver is a real threat and has already surpassed the chance of being injured or killed by an ordinary private driver (which is greater than being injured or killed by a professional driver) by the simple fact that Uber drivers spend more time on the road, increasing fatigue. We'll ignore the extra pressure caused by time constraints, talking passengers and so forth for now, I dont really need those to make my point.
It's a simple case of "market liquidity"
Again you're wrong here.
Uber is not competing on the same terms as ordinary taxi companies. They pay no tax, they dont pay for insurance, it is a false economy and the problem with false economies is that they always fail in the end.
In Uber's case, we're just waiting for that one fatal crash in a country with decent liabilty laws. Taxi companies here are protected because they pay tax, license fees and insurance so this limits their liability, Uber receives no such protection so when that one fatal crash happens, insurance companies will be allowed off the leash to tear Uber to shreds. Uber being killed by regulation would be a far kinder death.