There is another reason: employment status and the resulting side-effects. If you lock in a driver, you start to look like an employer with employees. This cre

There is another reason: employment status and the resulting side-effects. If you lock in a driver, you start to look like an employer with employees. This creates enormous payroll tax responsibility, workers comp insurance and other headaches for Uber/Lyft. I would bet that Uber/Lyft have burned a metric crapton of lawyer and accountant brains in an effort to be on the "safe" side of the independent contractor vs employee fight. They're not going to screw that up.