DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The Uber app that will get you a ride within minutes all through the use of a cell phone could soon service Daytona Beach. Some folks are excited about the experience, while others are not.
Margil McMurray- You have a lot of different options as far as like who picks you up and what you get picked up in right?" said Margil McMurray.
Uber says its app is convenient and seemless. A person locates the nearest driver, request a ride, get the driver's information and pay for the ride by phone. Service is already in Orlando, now Uber is taking a look in Daytona Beach.
"We are very pleased with the response that we've seen so far. That's in the rider and driver side," said Taylor Bennett, spokesperson for Uber.
However, not everyone welcomes this service to town.
"Uber is a very dangerous thing to have in Daytona Beach," said Michael McDonald, President of Daytona Beach Taxi Coalition. McDonald added that he is also a taxi driver and the service is unfair to him.
"A lot of drivers are out here already starving. It's going to take money away from them," he said.
McDonald is also concerned about customer safety.
"They're not going to do a background check, they are not going to see if this person is a sexual molester or anything like that," he said. "These people are going to show up at your door, you don't know who's going to be there."
Uber tells Local 6 that's not true.
"We do local, state and federal background checks and that's more stringent, more rigorous than any in the industry," Bennett said. "A lot of taxi companies only check 3-5 years, ours go back to 7 ... so that's industry leading in itself.
Bennett said it's not clear when Uber will come to Daytona Beach, but said the same thing about Orlando and Uber service started within two months in that case.