4 ms·

I was visiting DC for a wedding and in busy nightlife areas it was way easier to flag down a cab then figure out which of 10 cars pulled over is your uber.

• devoutsalsa 5y ago
  I’ve stepped into the wrong dark colored, ride share Prius before XD
  • dnautics 5y ago
    Imagine being a Prius drives who isn't even a rideshare driver who has to contend with drunk, often entitled a-holes (not saying you were one) assuming their car is an Uber.
  • ramphastidae 5y ago
    That’s why the app tells you the license plate number :)
  • Cederfjard 5y ago
    Why is Prius such a prevalent car for ridesharing? It hits some kind of sweet spot?
    • numpad0 5y ago
      Gas mileage and reliability?
    • devoutsalsa 5y ago
      I’m guessing the gas savings add up pretty fast when you’re driving 8+ hours per day. They are also reasonably space efficient, so you can comfortably seat most rides.
• buu700 5y ago
  That's an interesting point. Ubers are generally interchangeable, so why shouldn't you be able to just hop into any of them in a situation like that? Leaving the implementation aside (a number of different ideas come to mind), all that would be needed is for it to verify before you get in the car that it's the same type you ordered (e.g. UberX) and then detect and handle the fact that you've started a ride with that particular driver. Ideally this would be something that could be opted in or out of on the rider's end, as well as on the driver's end.
  • raverbashing 5y ago
    No, Ubers are not interchangeable! Because only your driver has your account connected to the ride. They're even asking for a PIN in some circumstances https://www.uber.com/blog/pin-verification-drivers/ https://www.uber.com/blog/pin-verification-drivers/
    • buu700 5y ago
      I mean interchangeable as in fundamentally the same kind of thing (car that takes you from here to somewhere else), of course not that you can already hop into someone else's ride and expect it to work. What I'm suggesting is that they could potentially add a feature that enables hopping into any of a set of cars (probably whichever arrives first or is closest) and matches the rider with the driver after the fact.
      • Cederfjard 5y ago
        Drivers are (supposedly) independent though, and it’s that particular one that accepted your fare. The replacement in your scenario might not want to do the same ride.
        • buu700 5y ago
          "Ideally this would be something that could be opted in or out of [...] on the driver's end.”
      • voakbasda 5y ago
        If they were interchangeable, they might start to look like employees. No, best to keep them looking like snowflake contractors… for tax purposes.
    • FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
      That's an implementation detail, not a necessity. It's also a source of inefficiency.
  • FooBarBizBazz 5y ago