Unfortunately, that isn't how Uber works. If someone was on the way and cancelled a ride, that is largely wasted time for the driver. The incentives for the dri

Unfortunately, that isn't how Uber works. If someone was on the way and cancelled a ride, that is largely wasted time for the driver. The incentives for the driver are to come pick you up and get you in their car as soon as possible (thats when they start earning per minute, per km money). What is more likely that occurred is that they either saw where you were going (which is revealed upon the ride request being accepted, they can only see how far away ETA wise you are from them when accepting and recently some passenger rating information, experiments have been done about showing the approximate pay of rides before accepting as well) and decided not to pick up OR they are multi-apping and found a closer ride (again not likely on this second one because repeated cancelling of rides lowers the likelihood you will get future rides of high value - given you are killing the user experience for the rider). You mentioned black cab which leads me to believe you might be in New York or Europe and yes, service there is definitely better but for MOST of the US, cabs were notoriously fickle and would RARELY show up on time and even if they did would then sometimes just leave once they heard where you were going or their card reader would "malfunction" just as you finish the ride.