[dabinat]

This caught my eye:

> I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to

I’m wondering what we lose as a society if people never have to be in even a mildly uncomfortable situation. There’s a book called The Comfort Crisis about this topic.

EDIT: The full quote is “I get privacy, time back, a safe ride, and I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to.”

In her quote she chose to separate safety and having a conversation with a stranger as two separate issues.

[junon]

As a gay dude I experienced my fair share of "uncomfortable" Uber rides from or to various places. No thanks. I don't need to stimulate those kinds of social skills or whatever.

Can't even imagine what women go through.

[init2null]

Gay here, but I've only experienced a concerning conversation once, and that was a longer trip where sometimes you find out too much. I took an exit ramp away from that topic of conversation and it was fine. Otherwise everyone has been decent to downright pleasant.

I'd feel like I'm losing something by giving up that human interaction, such that it is.

[pirate787]

This is the real issue:

"Uber received over 400,000 sexual assault and misconduct reports between 2017 and 2022"

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/uber-liable-pay-8-5-million-...

[ErroneousBosh]

That averages out at 220 reports a day, which kind of sounds like a lot to me.

[llbbdd]

I'm a man, and I've been using Uber since it launched. Most rides are fine, but there are enough weirdos on the platform that 220 incidents per day that are serious enough to report seems reasonable to me, even if you don't consider that they operate internationally.

I once had a driver pick me up in downtown Seattle, and it turned out to be that he was driving for Uber as a tactic for his entrepreneurial venture developing antimicrobial and hydrophobic coating. He claimed to have applied it to the fishing boat from Deadliest Catch. He was specifically circling downtown to try to pick up someone who could get the ear of someone in Amazon's grocery division that he could pitch to (which I was not). At a red light in a nightmarish seven-way intersection, he took out a square of cheesecloth that had apparently had the coating applied, and attempted to demonstrate its effectiveness by pouring water onto it. It worked, and the water got all over his passenger seat and center console instead while the light turned green and cars behind us honked.

A few months later, Uber tried to match me with that same driver, and I cancelled it and walked instead. I have to imagine that if a guy with that level of high-preparation social ineptitude can stick around in their system, that the number of people making offhand inappropriate moves or remarks must be reasonably high.

[Loocid]

Keep in mind that Uber does like 30 million rides per day.

[spike021]

One time I hopped in an Uber and got a missionary-like lecture on Islam and an invite to go to a mosque.

More typical of Christians so it kind of threw me off.

But anyway, a paid service shouldn't be starting that kind of conversation unless for some reason I started it and even then that'd make it just as uncomfortable for the driver.

[rafram]

I think "people should just deal with uncomfortable situations" (while in a vehicle that they have no control over!) is not a winning argument, but the continuing march toward tech-enabled isolation is absolutely bad.

It can be annoying to have to deal with irrational humans who make mistakes, but that really is just part of life! I'll take some cumbersome conversations over conducting my entire life via corporate app interfaces.

[cflewis]

This is a male perspective.

My wife will not ride alone in Uber's because she's had one too many uncomfortable -> possibly dangerous situations.

This appears to be true for all of her friends as well.

[lern_too_spel]

There are uncomfortable situations that you can walk away from like a checkout counter, and then there are uncomfortable situations where you are in a car in an unfamiliar location driven by the person making you uncomfortable.

[nutjob2]

I don't know, what am I gaining from listening to the 100th anti immigrant/POC/trans/gay/poor-person rant? For some reason people feel comfortable telling me this sort of shit. Maybe I look like a bigot.

Interacting with the general public absolutely sucks.