381–390 of 502 posts
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Because the Americans With Disabilities Act tells them they have to.
ADA also says these accommodations need to be readily achievable. Considering the income level of people working at rideshares, it's really not achievable and extremely unfair.
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That at the end of the day, Uber sent a woman into terrible situation, creating a bunch of externalities that society has to bare. Society should have the right to identify those externalities and bring the companies attention to those externalities. If the company says "not my problem" the public should get to decide if they want to allow a company to blithely foist those externalities onto society. They have a lega…
I'm not sure how this could be fixed though. Uber tells the drivers that they have to comply with ADA for legal reasons but if the drivers still don't then Uber is liable? It kind of feels like me suing a grocery store because someone pushed me into a wall that was built by the store. Uber could definitely do more (like banning drivers that don't comply and allowing passengers and drivers to indicate their disabiliti…
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I think you are giving service providers way too much leeway. Service providers should offer their service to everyone, not just to "easy" customers. Service providers should not reject you because you are disabled, because you have a child, because you have a certain religion, or whatever else is the problem. If someone is in the business of transporting people, they shouldn't be allowed to just pick the most profit…
Oh you mean like a licensing system that requires drivers to pick up all passengers? /s HAAS Act '37 NYC TLC '71 Operation Refusal '98 Not that NY has it exactly right, but at least there was some structure. The entire business model of Uber is regulation avoidance. They did not "distrupt" any business they just did as you said and stole all the profitable easy routes/riders, avoided pricing regulations, and driver c…
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Thats what Uber likes to pretend, but at the end of the day they are the ones charging my credit card.
They don't hire the drivers, and pretty much anyone can join the platform, so I don't agree that its 'pretend'. However, I do think we can do more to make sure the disabled are taken care of. Maybe riders could mark themselves as needing assistance, and drivers could get paid a few more pennies per mile for taking care of them - at the end of the ride, when the passenger approves the 'bonus'.
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The way you phrase it makes it sound like a UI issue. It is probably more accurate to say that Uber chooses to not provide this sort of functionality.
I mean, I'd call it a UX issue, where the U here is both the driver and the passenger. There is no way for me to tell the driver I have a car seat, and there is no way for the driver to get extra compensation for it. Now that they've added tipping I can at least tip them extra, but they don't know that until after they give me a bad rating for "wasting their time".
https://www.uber.com/en-TR/blog/uberfamily/
Several years ago, Uber had a big problem in eastern Canada where parents of young children would show up without a car seat. In Ontario law at the time, taxis were considered public transportation so children did not need to be put in car seats, but Uber was considered private vehicles - they were required to.
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No, Uber simply needs to accommodate a passenger with a service dog, by assigning the closest non-allergic driver to them, and the driver not refusing service.
I would suggest that if the allergies are sufficient enough to reach disability, that instead of "Uber needs to assign the closest non-allergic driver" (because the ADA doesn't require that a passenger state that they have a service animal) ... Rather, Uber needs to offer accommodations to drivers. Modification of the vehicle so that the driver and passenger areas are separate and the there is sufficient air filtrati…
Blind passengers need to have reasonable access to cars. If Uber wants to play in that market, they need to figure out how to accommodate those passengers. If the driver needs a screen, or a stack of N95 masks, to avoid allergies, that should be Uber's responsibility to provide.
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It’s not that much. It’s about 1600 hours of work which seems like the right amount taking on Uber and their lawyers. Also factor in the risk of working 1600 hours and getting paid nothing for it if the case was lost.
1600 hours is 9 months at 40hr/week. What's the risk they were taking? They wouldn't have taken the case if the risk of losing was high, so their E(X) was at least 250k.
Depends how you define high.
75% chance of winning is still a 25% chance of the lawyers walking away with nothing. Lawyers who operate like this are effectively making a calculated investment of their own time (which could be money from paying clients) as well as associate and support time (which is money) and they do deserve to be compensated for their time and the investment must pay off above just directly time in (e.g. they have to be allowed to make profit here!).
While I don't LOVE the proportions with 60% of the money going to the attorneys, I don't know enough about the case to judge it and there are remedies if the plaintiff thinks their attorneys are inflating expenses.
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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.
The fact that the laws exist in the first place seems to answer that line of questioning already.
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Are we going to offer a "bonus" to drivers that offer to drive old people, because they may take a little longer to get in the car? If the difference between profit and ruin is an extra 60 seconds for someone to sit down, then maybe the real solution is to pay the drivers a living wage.
Well really they should pay the Uber driver until they passenger is fully departed, but right now passengers get upset if the driver doesn't end the ride the moment they arrive (and if they start the drive before actually departing), so the driver has to load and unload on their own time. I try to make up for it by telling the driver to start the ride the moment I walk up, and letting them know not to end the ride un…
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Amortize the costs of the liars across the base cost of the room. It's really not that many people who will lie about it. Some folks end up paying a little more on average and some people cheat and pay a little less, but the folks who need service animal accommodations don't get accosted by desk clerks. Sounds like a win to me.
Many hotels and motels are small businesses (usually franchisees) that are low margin, low volume, they can't just eat the costs, which are also not equal the price of the room rate. A disruptive pet can cause you to have to refund multiple other rooms, and potential loss of future business too. A disruptive pet can cause physical damage to the room far in excess of the room rate. We once had a pet ruin the carpet so…
> they can't just eat the costs, which are also not equal the price of the room rate
Amortize the costs does not mean eat the costs, it means bake them into the base rate.