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Ride Sharing

     You wake up one late morning and rush through your daily ritual to get ready for work. Bread in the toaster, coffee pot brewing, the shower turned on. After finally finishing getting ready, you run out to your car only to realize, it won't start. It is now 8:35 and you know your boss would be furious if you showed up late again, you don’t have time to try and get your car to start before work. You start to panic until you remember you can call an Uber. While you might have to skip a few small luxuries this week to make up for the cost of getting a ride to and from work, it is more than worth it in your eyes if it means you aren’t late to work today. You pull up the app and quickly call a ride and are on your way to work in a manner of minutes. Somewhere in another part of the city, that very night someone is having their 21st birthday party. Drinks are passed all around and by the end of the night, they are excited to go home and attempt to sleep off what will no doubt be a very bad hangover the next morning. Normally, they would be the designated driver for the night, but since they were the guest of honor, their roommate called the both of them a lyft to get them home safely that night. These are just a few stories of how helpful ride-sharing services can be. However, many people are still skeptical about them and don’t trust their safety.

Photo by Massimo

     One of the biggest concerns surrounding ride-sharing services is that they do not always have to follow the same laws and regulations that taxis do, despite the fact that they provide more or less the same service. They avoid following these rules to save money and to avoid red tape in their business practices. There are also concerns about the fact that drivers are able to have access to passengers names and (if the passenger chooses to upload it) a profile photo of the passenger. The purpose of this is to provide passengers a better experience so that drivers know who they are picking up, but like anything else on the internet, it can be abused. In March 2014, a reporter for The Daily Beast Olivia Nuzzi wrote about her experiences being harassed by an Uber driver. Nuzzi writes about her encounter with a driver who had taken a photo of her while she was out on the street, and then who later used information found on the app to track her down and email her employer after she complained to Uber about him and got him fired. After contacting Uber, Nuzzi was informed this was not the first time someone complained about this particular drivers actions. Nuzzi writes about many other women who have faced similar harassment from Uber drivers, ranging from drivers soliciting phone numbers to drivers sexually harassing female passengers. Matthew Feeny, a policy analyst for the CATO institute, words it best- “It is inevitable that, among a large and growing group of rideshare drivers, some of them will turn out to be bad apples.  Traditional taxi drivers sometimes have run-ins with the law as well. The operative question is: Are Uber and Lyft taking proper precautions to protect their passengers’ safety? Are they screening their drivers adequately?” There are some places that have even gone as far as to ban ride-sharing services completely. It is also worthy to note that women being harassed on public transit, and in public in general, is not limited to Uber and other ride-sharing services. The recent increase in reported sexual assault is part of a larger issue with society that cannot be changed completely overnight and is seen by many women regardless of where they are. There is also the fact that sexual assault among women may not necessarily be increasing in recent years, but rather more women feel comfortable reporting it and sharing their stories.

Photo by Wayne S. Grazio

     This is not to say that ride-sharing services are without their perks. Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) found, “3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City, with an average wait-time of only 2.7 minutes”. That means fewer cars on the roads, which means fewer car accidents, less time sitting in traffic, less gas usage, less CO2 emissions, among other things. It is also safer for drivers, as there are fewer instances of violence towards Uber drivers compared to taxi drivers. Drivers for ride-sharing apps do not carry cash like taxi drivers do, so there are fewer robberies. Drivers are also able to report issues about passengers to the company they drive for since the company has the name of everyone who uses their service. These protections have made ride-sharing services much safer for the drivers. The fact that it is easier to report a driver from a ride-sharing program over a taxi driver also attracts many people to use their services. Many passengers feel safer using Uber over a taxi because through the app, you can report drivers who have acted inappropriately.

Photo by Mapbox

     Ride-sharing services are also often cheaper for passengers than taxis are. In a study done by Ride Guru, a service that compares prices of transportation in most cities, that when getting a ride at the top 25 busiest airports in the US it is always cheaper to take an Uber than a taxi. However, this is not the case for 3 out of the 25 airports when the service is doing surge-pricing, which is when the service is experiencing an increased amount of use in a particular location at a particular time and raises its prices. According to Time, there are instances where choosing an Uber over a taxi can save you up to $37 when leaving from LAX. 

     There is a risk in any public service that isn’t news to anyone. It’s ultimately up to the passenger to decide if the benefits outweigh the risks. Services like these are very helpful when you’re in a tight squeeze or even just if you want to have a backup plan after a night out. They provide an easy and relatively inexpensive way to get from point A to point B. Every day there are thousands of people who use services like these with no negative outcomes. But is it worth the risk that you take once you set foot into that car?

Here are some links that give some tips on how to stay safe while riding in an Uber.

http://college.usatoday.com/2015/10/26/uber-safety-tips/

https://www.uber.com/info/rider-safety-tips/

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/stay-safe-riding-uber/story?id=23990496