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by yieldcrv 682 days ago
Why, if its not cheaper, what is the value add (if you’re not female as another commenter pointed out)

I routinely have as little interaction with the driver as I want

3 comments

My Ubers often smell very strongly of the food the driver has been eating.

The driver is often on a call for the entire journey, which is annoying.

It’s often much colder or warmer than I’d ideally like.

An extreme case, but I once had a driver stop a ride, jump out of the car and pull the driver out of the car in front. They proceeded to have a fist fight. The other guy had honked at him for blocking the road or something.

I’d much prefer a computer to drive me around.

1.) Waymos are safer than human-driven rideshare vehicles

2.) The vehicles are standardized, comfortable and clean

3.) You can play your own music or none at all, roll down the windows or leave them up, while an Uber driver's preferences might not match your own

4.) Introvert coming from a social event needing to recharge batteries
I take a lot of ride shares and I’ve always been able to recharge. 9/10 times I say nothing to the driver the whole time

Not trying to play devil’s advocate, just my experience

Mark Pincus (Zynga founder) tweeted that he wanted an option not to talk to drivers.

He got a huge shit storm for not wanting to talk to poor people.

Definitely don't advertise that you don't want to talk to drivers. Progressive politics is weird.

After my first home run in business, which was widely publicized, I learned that my email and phone number were tainted. On craigslist I started getting worse deals, seems everyone seems to google everyone.

I rotated identities, just email, phone number, assumed a different last name in casual arenas, and everything went back to normal as a nobody.

Subsequently, the most amusing thing became reading about women googling all their potential dates. I never do that, but its funny that I’m a ghost and makes me wonder how many other ghosts they're giving the green check mark on. Seems like a waste of energy.

maybe this is different in SF, but NYC taxi/uber drivers never say anything besides confirming you are the actual person and the destination, and maybe asking where you want to be dropped off
I know it is anecdotal, but I am just glad you didn’t get to experience the Uber ride I took from JFK to Dumbo earlier this year. It was around 1.5 hours of the driver trying to talk to me about Putin actually being a 5D chess mastermind and other conspiracy tier garbage after finding out that I was russian. Yeah, thanks, I will take Waymo to avoid listening to that or deal with the awkwardness of having to ask the driver to stop talking (which I didn’t do because it felt rude).

And while I agree that drivers here seem to be less inclined to talk than on west coast, I still occasionally get drivers who facetime the entire ride on the loudspeaker or watch videos on their phone mounted on the dashboard (while barely paying attention to the road).

Not even mentioning some of the stories my friends who are women told me about their uber/lyft experiences.

Nice I always was a fan of the promise of 1.)

I like 2.) and 3.) and this was a promise of uber and lyft originally, but instead its always been a cumbersome experience that might as well not exist

Citation for 1?
Waymo’s data was derived from crashes reported under NHTSA’s Standing General Order (SGO), over 7.14 million fully autonomous miles driven 24/7 through the end of October 2023 across Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. That data was then compared to relevant human crash rates resulting in police reports, injuries, and/or property damage.

When considering all locations together, compared to the human benchmarks, the Waymo Driver demonstrated: An 85% reduction or 6.8 times lower crash rate involving any injury, from minor to severe and fatal cases (0.41 incidence per million miles for the Waymo Driver vs 2.78 for the human benchmark) A 57% reduction or 2.3 times lower police-reported crash rate (2.1 incidence per million miles for the Waymo Driver vs. 4.85 for the human benchmark) This means that over the 7.1 million miles Waymo drove, there were an estimated 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes compared to if human drivers with the benchmark crash rate would have driven the same distance in the areas we operate.

> This means that over the 7.1 million miles Waymo drove, there were an estimated 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes compared to if human drivers with the benchmark crash rate would have driven the same distance in the areas we operate.

These numbers are not as high as I thought they would be.

You get to be alone during the ride