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Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

bbc.com

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Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#201

Post by dnautics »

Bedon292 wrote: post #176
Causality1 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't they have the option to reject the ride? What if they're allergic, or deathly afraid of dogs? I have a friend like that. Anything bigger than a chihuahua and she'd probably flee the vehicle before driving it anywhere. Being able to reject work you can't handle seems like the one silver lining of being "independent contractors".

Seems rather simple: Let drivers with allergies put that in their profile. Let riders put that they have a service animal in. And the system just doesn't pair them together. And now that the system knows someone has a service animal you can automatically review any cancelations by the driver and look for problems. I am actually kind of surprised that there isn't some review system already in place when a driver ends…

In big metros, Uber and Lyft could just have on-call backup drivers that are specifically employees who are there to handle this situation. If the metro is not "big enough to warrant it", then Uber and Lyft shouldn't be there.

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#202

Post by zachrip »

ehmmmmmmmm wrote: post #171
Causality1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about the US but in the UK the Equality Act of 2010 allows drivers with documented allergies to refuse rides to service animals.

This is good. PTSD should be added to that as well. Dogs send me into panic and it would be a bad idea for the law to force me to drive against it. I mean, I would because it's the law, and as a result, you would be in danger.

Couldn't this result in anyone just abusing this system when they don't want to drive with service dogs in the car?

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#203

Post by reaperducer »

kube-system wrote: post #172
jedberg wrote: post #50

The real problem here is Uber/Lyft not accounting for this in their app. As someone who takes rideshare with a small child who needs a car seat, I've had similar issues. A person with a dog will need extra time getting in and out, and the driver will need extra time to clean the car and remove any dog hair or other stains or spots. A person with a carseat like myself needs extra time to get into and out of the car wh…

I don't think Uber/Lyft wants to take the responsibility of ADA compliance, because that is implying that their drivers are employees.

Uber is at least aware of its responsibilities.

When I drove for Uber, we received email messages every couple of months reminding us of the rules concerning service animals and people who need physical assistance getting in and out of the car.

I seem to recall that if you had the right kind of car you could mark yourself available for wheelchairs and other things. I was forever picking up people with walkers and helping them in and out, though I know some drivers never ever wanted to touch a passenger unless they were dead drunk and had to be dragged out of the car and deposited on the front lawn of the destination address. (Been there, done that.)

Maybe it's regional. Everything about Uber seems to be.

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#204

Post by xboxnolifes »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #62

It was downvoted below, but reposting here because this is something that I think should be seen as it comes up often: >> "The bottom line is that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a guide dog should be able to go anywhere that a blind person can go." > Okay, I completely get this, but question -- what about business owners and drivers who are traumatized by dogs? If I were a driver, I'd be much more likely…

> If you want to completely avoid dogs, then don't take a job that involves having to interact with dogs.

Following the above, wouldn't this be any job that requires interacting with other people? So basically any job?

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#205

Post by joombaga »

flowerlad wrote: post #98
maxharris wrote: post #58

I'd like to go out on a limb and say that I don't agree with the ADA. I don't think any private person or organization should be compelled to provide facilities or services for anyone else, regardless of what their need is. I have no animus toward people with disabilities - I'm just saying that no one should be forced to help anyone else. If you want to do something for someone else's benefit, you should be free to d…

This is not about "helping". This is about illegal discrimination. When you open a service to the public then you can't refuse it to someone on the basis of their disability. (Or race, or gender, or sexual orientation.)

Right, but those laws are in place to help those who would be refused service on those bases. It's reasonable to question if those laws (e.g. in the context of Uber and people with disabilities) are truly a societal benefit, and if that benefit is worth the moral cost of legal coercion.

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#206

Post by stefan_ »

valuearb wrote: post #111
rectang wrote: post #10

> It rejected Uber's claim that the company itself was not liable, because, it argued, its drivers had the status of contractors rather than employees. Another example of how rideshare companies attempt to offload risk and liability onto individual drivers who are generally unprepared and unaware that this is happening. Insurance is a more important example (most rideshare drivers are not properly insured), but this…

Are you saying that the drivers didn't know what they were doing to this woman was wrong? Or are you claiming Uber told the drivers to mistreat her?

Why does it matter? I hired Uber; if they hire contractors to do their job, that doesn't matter to me. If it goes wrong, I'm still gonna sue Uber.

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#207

Post by yks »

bgorman wrote: post #15

I think anyone who has taken Uber and Lyft a lot knows that they allow drivers to abuse the system for their benefit, with no recourse for riders. A few incidents that have bothered me: 1. Having an Uber refuse to take me to the airport from downtown Chicago 2. Lyft not giving me an automatic refund for a pickup in SOMA when the driver had been heading down 101 for 10 minutes and was showing no signs of turning aroun…

It sounds like Uber/Lyft will eventually degrade to the level of service of the regular taxis of old, when the default expectation of interaction is to get scammed or worse. Which means that another disruption opportunity is coming soon!

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#208

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

akiselev wrote: post #157
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #57

Yeah, but most of that goes to...anyone? Bueller? THE LAWYERS! > She was awarded $324,000 in damages and more than $800,000 in attorney fees and court costs, according to the arbitrator's award posted online by her attorneys. That's from the CNN variant of the story. To be fair, they likely earned it, in this case. It seems to have taken a while. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/02/business/uber-blind-passenger...

The awards were separate, one for damages and another for services rendered by her legal team. She could have won the damages and received nothing for the rest, in which case she would be net negative 500k or so. It doesn't look like an ambulance chaser case where the she agreed to give the lawyers 2/3 of the damages. Does go to show you how crazy expensive real litigation is. From the document her team posted: > She…

Agreed.

She ended up making money.

And Uber needs to give a bit more training to their drivers about ADA.

1.1M is under-the-couch-cushions for Uber, but the publicity cost them a lot more.

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#209

Post by grumple »

fastball wrote: post #97
shuntress wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drivers represent the company and all interactions with the driver are setup through the company. So, yes. ie: If a driver snatches my backpack and drives away, I expect Uber to replace/return what was stolen from me by their contractor. Not for them to just tell me to take a hike and deal with it myself.

So there is absolutely nothing a company can do to absolve themselves of the poor behavior of employees? By that system, Uber would still be at fault if they explicitly told all drivers "you are not allowed to deny service to someone with a service dog under any circumstances", and a driver did anyway.

> So there is absolutely nothing a company can do to absolve themselves of the poor behavior of employees?

Let's disregard the absolutism for a bit. Generally companies are held accountable for the way their employees behave on the job. If they don't make or enforce policies, that's on Uber. It's clearly a widespread problem for them. The saying goes "the buck stops here" despite what these companies may do to avoid responsibility.

Re: Uber ordered to pay $1.1M to blind woman refused rides

#210

Post by Dirlewanger »

teachrdan wrote: post #60
kumarvvr wrote: post #32

Well, as always, lawyers take the juicy bits, leaving the actual victim with peanuts. Justice, is increasingly costly.

I wouldn't say that $324,000 is "peanuts." Especially considering that, in most cases, that money is not taxed because it is compensation, not earnings. The amount the plaintiff won in this case is equal to 8 or 9 years of (pre-tax!) mean or median income for a blind person in the US: https://nfb.org//images/nfb/publications/jbir/jbir15/jbir050...

~30% of a settlement is peanuts though. Also, do people have to pay taxes on these earnings? There goes ~30% of that if so.
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