[ikeboy]

They can just counteract this by refusing to turn on surge pricing if they detect a large number of drivers disappearing if they predict that they'll come back shortly. Should be easy to predict that pattern and counteract it, unless the drivers are willing to skip work for an extended period of time.

[freeflight]

But why should they?

Both Uber and Lyft also profit from this because in the end it's the customers who pay the difference.

So I don't really see either of these companies wasting time and effort on fixing this "problem".