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Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says

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Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says

#221
post #141

And yet people still do it. I guess the drivers still find it useful, if they didn't, why would they continue driving?

Because they have literally no other choice? When your choice is to lose money driving for Uber, or starve, you kinda lose the ability to stop if you don't find it "useful".

So driving for uber is better than the alternatives. What's the problem? Uber is paying them and to them it's better than anything else ... isn't this a good thing?

Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is entirely dependent on where you live and the quality of the Taxis. For example, in the London and Singapore, Taxis are awesome. In California, (particularly in the Bay area) - Taxis are horrible beyond belief. The cars are unsafe and uncomfortable, the drivers are terrible and lack knowledge. It's often the case that I will come out of a peninsula hotel (Say, San Mateo) and see a queue of taxis waiting to pic…

In front of that hotel in San Mateo, are the Uber customers chasing a better experience, or a better deal?

They are almost all business travelers, so multiple possibilities - A big one is Uber travel is trivial to expense, a lot of companies just send it directly into the expense system, and you don't even need to do anything. Another one is (for some reason) a lot of business travelers shy away from Uber X and only ride Uber Black - I have no idea why, after a thousand+ rides in UberX, I really don't see the additional value of Uber Black, unless maybe you are giving a customer a ride? Price is, within reason, irrelevant to business travels - company is paying for it anyways. Speaking for myself, personally - I will do almost anything to avoid having to get into a Cab in San Francisco or the Peninsula, from a experience/comfort perspective.

Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says

#223
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They talk about two distinct policies here, a personal policy (which still has to permit ridesharing, according to the illustration), which applies at any moment the driver is using the car for personal use (i.e. not logged into the Uber app to accept trips), then another policy, provided by Intact, which covers the Uber trips. This page seems to be more about a kind of interface between the two policies, not that Ub…

Yes there are two distinct policies, both offered by Intact or their subsidiaries: 1. A commercial policy paid for by Uber which covers all Uber drivers while online. 2. A personal policy paid for by the driver which covers them while offline and explicitly permits ridesharing at no extra cost. This personal policy is the same price as the competitors without ridesharing, so it is not an added expense.

Oh, I see, thanks.

Re: Uber, Lyft Drivers Earning a Median Profit of $3.37 per Hour, Study Says

#224
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious -- how does this work with, for example, a professional Youtuber? Are they considered Youtube employees?

This is a great question and a pretty common misconception. No, because the revenue test is one of the criteria the judge/IRS looks at. There are other criteria like where and how the "contractor" wants the job done and the relationship between the parties. Youtube does not tell these Youtubers how to present their videos Youtube does not tell these Youtubers how long their videos should be Youtube does not tell thes…

This is a good overview in the US legal landscape, though it's worth pointing out that the IRS and DOL have differing standards on what does or does not constitute and employment relationship. But I'm actually interested in the European legal landscape here, where contracting relationships generally require the contractor to acquire a certain percentage of their revenue from a separate source. If someone was earning their entire living on Youtube, it would seem to me that these EU laws would consider that person an employee of Youtube. That's obviously not something Youtube would appreciate, and I'm not sure if it's actually the case -- hence the question.
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