Uber and Lyft drivers
 

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Uber and Lyft drivers are....terrible drivers! Not speaking from the perspective of being a passenger, but rather as someone who's in another car trying to navigate the same roads as these completely situationally-unaware drivers. I understand they're frequently driving in unfamiliar neighborhoods, but so are cabbies. These part-time drivers-for-hire have no awareness of the traffic patterns around themselves and exhibit poor driving judgement all the time. They rival Prius drivers (or in days before, Volvo drivers).

Slow in no. 1 lane, on the phone trying to get to where they need to go. U turn when they feel like and somewhat rude when called out with a horn due to blocking traffic in the middle of the road. I live on a narrow street, on the way up the hill, they seem to stop to load or unload passengers at will without a care if they are impeding traffic or not. The rest of us just wait for these inconsiderate butt heads. I know, in their minds, they are working and deserves a break.

Since anyone with a car can drive for Uber, they don't seem to know traffic rules. Simple things like downhill traffic yield to uphill. For get that. Aint happenning. Maybe just Uber drivers in LA?

Like cabbies are any better? I’ve been in Uber and lyft every day this week, and honestly their driving hasn’t bothered me near as bad as most cabs have...

Same situation here in NYC. They've added 80K+ drivers who are mostly on their way to or from Manhattan. Add that idiot army to the road work, regular traffic, new bike lanes/crazy new traffic patterns from our current & past mayors, then you've got a recipe for a real *****storm everyday. Everybody has noticed it and is pissed off.

Uber & Lyft are basically taxi driver fantasy camp for the average schmuck who really shouldn't drive professionally, if at all. Their business model requires them to be distracted drivers, with their heads buried in their phones. I've seen so many of them pull crazy bonehead moves, I can't believe that there isn't an epidemic of crashes involving them. I give them a wide berth here in NYC after too many white knuckle incidents. My hatred for them runs deep. Luckily they are easy to spot here...average cars with TLC plates. I hear in most other cities they just have regular plates.

Yellow cab drivers that have any kind of driving experience blow these guys out of the water in all manner of car control, situational awareness, etc. After reading about all the money that Uber & Lyft are losing right now, my sincere hope is that the business will implode, especially when the NYC congestion pricing starts in 2021. Ironically that pricing was brought about the current congestion nightmare that Uber & Lyft helped create. When their prices come more in line with what yellow taxis charge and the companies can no longer afford to subsidize and pay the drivers what they're getting now (i.e. meaning losing even more money than they are right now), then maybe the herd will thin and they will go back to babysitting or whatever.

They are just as bad in the UK.I report all cases of bad driving to the Uber safety management(; ( they might not do anything, but the police aren't interested unless an actual accident with injuries has occurred).We don't have Lyft here.

Low / no ( skill set ) barrier to entry..................

this would be my take. regulating cab co's is a good thing and the economics of uber and such don't work when they have to follow the rules.

You would think they would become some of the best drivers on the road, with all the seat time, in real world situations.
I learned half my driving skills from my pizza driving days as a teenager .

I genuinely had no idea so many people wanted to be taxi drivers, every other car has those ubiquitous stickers. And ditto to all the above. Driving in San Francisco is a nightmare now. We have Uber/Lyft and the added joy of the Tech bus that basically own the joint, and can stop any moment and block an active road lane for minutes creating havoc. And potholes, but I digress. Just turn on the hazard light and you own it buddy... We are a few years away from city access being denied to regular traffic - maybe at this point it'll be a good idea. Dunno.

I drove for Uber and Lyft for a few months last year. The only bad driving I was guilty of was because of the piss poor navigation in the software from each app. There were times when I was given an address that was several miles away from where the actual rider was waiting for me. I got one complaint once for speeding, though I was going right with the flow of traffic. A few times the riders asked me to really hurry and assured me they were fine with my going fast. In my experience, the navigation was wrong more than 50% of the time and beyond wrong about 25% of the time. There were a few times when I had to just pull over and manually enter the address into Google Maps and then use it.

Yesterday there was this Lyft/Uber Prius on the fast lane going 55 and like a 20 car gap to the car in front. Unbelievable!

And yeah I drive for Uber as a pastime, maybe once a month.

I don't understand why their navigation is so bad. Can't they see me like I can see them? I'll see their car circling a block away but they're not getting any closer to me.

Not at all. They license through Goole Maps, but with their own changes. A driver is just following the route on his phone, as you would when using Google Maps in real time. As you get close, a pop up says "rider has been notified." But it often says you have arrived when you're nowhere near the rider. I remember getting called to a Sushi place in a strip mall and the software took me into some HOA neighborhood and said I had arrived. Turns out I was only about 200' away, but on the other side of the wall between the subdivision and the strip mall, requiring a lot more driving and navigating to get to the restaurant. That's just how it goes about half the time. And then don't even get me started when it comes to apartment and condo complexes, gated communities, gate codes, private roads and on and on. I got called to a gated community that has a guard house. I happened to play in a band with a guy there, so the guard house folks probably knew my car. I just told them I was there for an Uber rider and they waved me in. Turns out the rider was at the golf course on the other side of the main road from the gated community. I was pretty far into the neighborhood, when I finally had to call the rider and ask where he was. As the crow flies he was about 500' from where I was and the map was saying I had arrived. To get to him required five more minutes of driving.

As I stand back and look at the traditional vs. uber models, it seems to me that uber has not so much changed replaced or revolutionized the driver equations, but has replaced the dispatching model.

Some of the traditional dispatchers and payment techniques that I have been subject too as a passenger are terrible, as are the interiors of the cabs and the manners of those drivers.

Some cities do have a well run and respectful taxi industry though, but not many from my experience.

bottom of food chain

Illegal u turns are the norm, as is just stopping in the middle of the highway to pick up or drop off. No regards for traffic laws or other drivers .

That's interesting. I don't doubt your observations but I haven't had that problem in L.A. or other cities I've used the service. Maybe once in a while they stop a couple door away or on the wrong side of the street but that's about it.

Don't they give you a dedicated smart phone for driving for them, so you could still use your own w regular mapping? I'm not sure, seems I heard that(?)

Which car were you using and did you make $$?

I have used a taxi maybe twice in 15 years. Both times it was a clapped out Ford, and the interior of the car was gross. They got me to my destination but I felt I needed a shower.

I have only used UBER once. I was Washington DC, and needed to get to a meeting. A nice man showed up right on time as the app said, and get me right to the destination. It was reasonable price and a nice car, nice driver. It was the type of experience Uber wishes all their customers would have.

One of my friends was in Savannah, GA recently and needed to catch a plane home. Savannah has no real commercial airport, so it is the Uber ride to Hilton Head. They placed the pickup call the evening before for a 4:00 AM pickup. They went downstairs and the driver was not there. They called and he was still in bed. The good news is another lady was going to the airport as well, so they just shared the ride.

My friend is a married lady and she had her husband with her for the trip. The lady that had the Uber ride was taken by surprise by the driver. He arrived on time in a nice car. But the guy was dressed in a full French Maid's dress and makeup. The lady that called the Uber said she would have never accepted the ride if the husband were not there. In the end, he was a good driver, and got them to the airport as scheduled.

If I were to drive for Uber, I now know what my uniform would be.