I’m glad someone taught me how to use those tags! 
You’re welcome, @TheirFeldspars!
7 Likes
Do you expect people claiming to be female in order to use the wrong rideshare service to be such a big problem in practice? Why not just take people’s word for it? It’s not like anything catastrophic happens if someone gets away with it. As I understand it, it is primarily about the passengers’ experience and that shouldn’t change unless men who don’t give a damn hog all the cars.
1 Like
Just a hypothetical here.
Wouldn’t an alternative be to include a “gender reputation”? It’s tough to defend some service only hiring or serving certain segments of society. But we pretty much let people decide who they want to buy services from. So just have a couple reputation scores, including one for gender*. Clients can then decide for themselves what they are most comfortable with.
Over time, if there is a gender that isn’t getting much business, some will drop out of the service. Not all, but enough that there will be a gender skew.
As for drivers choosing a gender they are willing to give rides to, that’s a different matter. Gender reputation for clients? No choice but to give rides to all? I dunno.
- Why a reputation for gender? In case someone falsely registers their gender. Yeah, I’m ignoring possible conflict there for now.
If a restaurant can get away with that, then I see no reason this company shouldn’t be able to defend the practice of having exclusively female drivers for the safety and comfort of their female customers.
There’s the problem, “female safety and comfort” is not a priority of the legal system or of our society in general.
2 Likes
The service will also pick up kids of any gender under age 13, as well as anyone of any age who identifies as a woman. “If they’re trans and identify as a woman, they can drive and ride with us, no problem at all,” Pelletz said. (from a TechCrunch article)
To further increase safety, Chariot is also using a meatworld version of two-factor authorization: The app is built for safety. Every time the driver starts her day, she has to answer a random security question that changes daily to ensure her identity. When the passenger requests a ride, a safe word pops up on the driver and passenger’s phone. If the driver says the correct word, the ride may begin. If the driver doesn’t have the same safe word, the passenger then knows immediately not to get into that Chariot, and will then look for the correct vehicle. (from the website)
3 Likes
We’re talking hundreds of assult cases vs. MILLIONS!! Of rides. And it does go both ways . This author is merely looking for attention.
yeah. God forbid that we actually give a shit about human beings that are assaulted.
Meaning?
And you aren’t posting drive by on this here forum?
6 Likes
What about gay men as drivers? We don’t rape women, either.
Yea, we should give a shit about human beings being assaulted , I’m just mad that the author singles out uber, what but the taxi’s and lyft. I drive for uber and take it personally when he Insinuates that we are all sleazy rape friendly drivers . .
Uber is failing to set policies adequate to reduce risk of sexual assault. They’re leaving money on the table from shelters and crisis programs too.
So there’s no point in blaming the competition. Blame Uber.
Good one. 
1 Like
So petition your broker, Uber, for policies that protect women driver/passengers if you don’t like being lumped in with things that actually happen that they don’t react to.
Also I can assure you that people who would avail themselves of a safer ride service already know that it would also be a leg up on lyft, taxis, hitchhiking, as well as Uber.
Uber gets mention because it either is, wants to be or will be the big boy on the block, so go ahead and be offended but their business practices meet the definition of sleazy, and their policies don’t address the hundreds of assaults you know about. Should it be thousands, or some particular order of magnitude more before they are called out on it?
Letmehelpyouwiththatbutthurthereisyourhashtag
#NotAllUberDrivers
5 Likes
Relevant paragraph - “The service will also pick up kids of any gender under age 13, as well as anyone of any age who identifies as a woman. “If they’re trans and identify as a woman, they can drive and ride with us, no problem at all,” Pelletz said.”
(Pelletz being Michael Pelletz, the founder of Chariot)
1 Like
Is this a space on the bingo card?
6 Likes
Doesn’t that make it the same type of unenforceable rule as “Only service animals allowed on public transit… except they don’t have to have a special tag, and we’re not allowed to ask for any proof?”
I mean, James Deen or Bill Cosby could get in the car and claim to identify as a woman. Who are you to police their genders?
No idea, and I’m not the person to ask. Old mate just wanted a source for that information, and I had one, and there we are. Really not a discussion I’ve got anything worthwhile to contribute to, I’m afraid.
1 Like
That’s basically the logic that people are using to write the anti-LGBT bathroom laws.
But in real life cisgendered men who commit sex crimes don’t claim to identify as women in order to facilitate those crimes. We don’t need new rules to police that kind of thing because frankly it ISN’T a thing.
If cisgendered male rapists ever DO start claiming to be trans women then we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
6 Likes
It’s the opposite of that.
Bathroom laws (which are a bad idea, just to be clear) seek to restrict usage of facilities to an arbitrarily defined subset of the population. This cab company is also seeking to restrict usage of its facilities to an arbitrarily defined subset of the population.
Why does it become a good idea when the cab company does the same thing North Carolina did?
Not quite. North Carolina itself is not restricting anything.
Suppose that two gay men on their way to pick out a wedding cake in Portland were denied a ride on the grounds that they identified as male, sued the ride company, and won.
If in response, Oregon passed a law allowing such services to to restrict their clients to self identified women, then they would be doing something pretty close to what North Carolina has done.
I think that’s pretty much true. But what about the man who just needs to use the “women’s” WC because the men’s next door is out of order? Either you let him in, or you have to have a testable, legal definition of “identify as” in order to exclude him. And that WILL be “a thing”, I expect before this year is out.
I think the only problem with this is male children over 13 bit. So basically we’re going to see it denied to ten and twelve year-old black kids. The research is in that most black kids are percieved to be older than they are, and unlike adults, kids don’t always have a universal ID like a driver’s license. I think it’s more realistic to allow for children of greater age accompanied by their mothers than it is to pretend that 14 year old boys have nothing to fear from creepy Uber drivers. I’ve ridden in taxis as a teenager and my experiences with creepy (licensed) cab drivers was bad enough. The difference between thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen can get kind of blurry from a safety perspective.
5 Likes
