You meant to say “better than just calling a cab”. A ride you call for, be it Uber, Lyft, or a cab, is intrinsically safer than hailing a cab, because there is a record of your connecting with the driver. It isn’t always safe to get into a stranger’s car.
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If you want to use cabs for the bar scene, it’s best to get to know a driver and get a cell phone number. Ask your favorite bartenders if they personally know any. That way, you can call the cab driver directly and make sure he/she will be in the vicinity when you are ready to move. You’ll also get a much more accurate estimate of waiting time. It’s not as convenient as Uber or Lyft, but it’s the best way I’ve found for dealing with traditional cab companies. Especially if you’re in an area that doesn’t have ubiquitous cab coverage.
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As a rideshare driver (for Lyft), I greatly value the ability to be compensated for some jackass vomiting in my car. As others have mentioned, both Lyft and Uber are exploitative of their drivers, so it’s hard to get by as it is. The last thing we need are drivers being assholes and giving them excuses to pay us even less.
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It’s like you’re talking about Winnipeg.Only we don’t have Uber, we have Tappcar. And it’s pretty friggin great.
I feel safer with Tappcar drivers than cab drivers, too. Cab drivers here are, on average, assholes. They treat indigenous folks like trash, and suggest to women passengers they like that they can pay their fare with sex (i’ve had it happen. He offered me drugs, too). They know they can get away with it, and their bosses don’t do anything because they have a monopoly on the industry. Tappcar drivers? When they chat, they’re friendly and don’t cross boundaries. When they don’t, it’s because they know they’ll get a tip for it. Fingers crossed it stays this way.
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Cab drivers in LA are, on average, assholes, too. They are grumpy. Recently my wife took one from the airport and by the time she got home the cabbie was spitting mad that we live in the hills and just started yelling at her. I don’t like Uber either, but I’ve never had a mean driver.
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Our police have vans for carting drunks around. The vans can be hosed out between shifts or even between customers. This makes me wonder if ride share services could use similar hardware to offer drunk transportation services. And no surcharge for vomiting in the vehicle.
It will be interesting to see if they decide to just hope that the rating system sorts it out and they can issue a few refunds in the meantime; or if they will end up going with a more technologically involved solution:
User acceptance might not be so hot, since it would involve some extra install and potentially-creepy cameras(or add a modest delay as people take phone shots behind seats and in similar vomit dens); but given what adequate cell cameras and storage don’t cost these days it would be technically quite feasible to add a ‘before and after’ photographic record system: one set of shots before the passenger boards(both as a baseline and for the driver’s benefit should the passenger decide to claim that it was just terrible in there when they got on); and then one just as they exit; so that you can do a diff and see what, if anything, changed.
It probably wouldn’t be impossible to splash that careful-prepared jar of easy-clean vomit simulant moments before the ‘after’ shot; but it would eliminate casual he said/she said stuff in both directions.
Many Most areas have no cab service.When you are in a place where hailing summoning a cab is an option, you have to deal with cabbies who want to gas up while the meter is running, don’t know how to get where you need to go, and maintain their cab like it’s a cattle car.
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This ^^^^^^. Even though we have 3 different companies, they all seemed to have an agreement to not rock the boat. To keep service equally bad and fares equal bloated. For all of Uber’s evils the one good effect they had was to destabilize this monopoly.
Now if someone could do the same to Internet providers.
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Were you near some government building at the time? Maybe it thinks you’re some kind of secret agent investigator?
Remember folks, Uber is NOT your friend.
Captain Obvious out!
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