Not a lawyer but I'm obligated to be at least partially conversant with this by dint of once being a consultant and now being an employer: The driver is clearl

Not a lawyer but I'm obligated to be at least partially conversant with this by dint of once being a consultant and now being an employer: The driver is clearly not an employee of the passenger. A driver given the instruction that they must comply with the passenger's preferences (as opposed to exercising their judgement as an independent business) may well become an employee of the entity enforcing that instruction. It will probably be remarked upon in litigation over Uber that Uber will terminate their relationship with drivers who fall below a particular cutoff, specifically tells drivers this, and often specifically instructs them in ways to ensure this doesn't happen to them. These do not feel like insignificant facts to me. I'd ask Grellas to handicap Uber's risk of being reclassified prior to asking me to do it, since he is an expert on this subject and I am not, but even from my lay view of the situation it looks like some of the Uber for Xs are at markedly more risk than others. Uber feels markedly less risky than firms which e.g. develop in-app checklists for heading off particular ops problems.