For Whom The Uber Tolls
It’s Saturday night… not even late. A few minutes after nine. I’m at Mission and 7th. Get a request for an address on Market, a block and a half away. I take a right on 7th and pull into the far left lane. As I turn onto Market, a girl in cut-off jeans and a tank top waves me down. She’s practically in the middle of the street. Grabs my door handle before I can even stop. Climbs in the backseat. I ask if she’s Andrea, the name of the person I’m supposed to pick up. She mumbles something and rolls down the window. The rider destination has already been added in the app so I start the ride.
“We’re going to the Richmond then?” I ask.
She says nothing. I look over my shoulder. She’s curled up against the door, passed out. I start driving. Turn off Market onto Hayes and then right on Franklin. As I approach O’Farrell, I get a text from the generic Uber number: “I’m on 8th and Market across from Chase.”
I immediately pull over. Wake up the girl in my back seat.
“Hey, I think you got in the wrong car.”
She comes to, but her eyes are blurry. She’s not all there. It’s obvious she’s wasted. I don’t smell alcohol though.
“You got into the wrong car,” I tell her again. She’s confused. “Uhhmmm… I can get out…” She has an accent. Possibly German. As her voice trails off, she looks around. She has no idea where she is. Fuck. I was hoping to make the $38 an hour guarantee Uber's offering this weekend by staying online as long as possible. But I can’t just leave her on the side of the street in her condition.
“Where are trying to go?”
She tells me an address on Battery Street. I realize that’s what she probably told me when she got in the car. I have her repeat the address a second time, just to make sure. Ask if she’s okay. “Yeah.” She curls back up against the door. I cancel the original ride and click the fare review link. Select the option “don’t charge – wrong client.” My phone rings. The generic Uber number. It’s Andrea, the girl who actually requested the ride. I explain, as apologetically as I can, that I picked up the wrong passenger. I tell her that I canceled the ride and will make sure she doesn’t get charged. And that I’ll send a follow up email to Uber. She asks what to do next. I tell her to request another Uber. Apologize again. I drive to the Financial District. Fighting traffic and shitting bricks. I've read way too many news articles about fuck-ups in Uber cars not to panic. As I rush through Nob Hill, hoping and praying nothing bad happens with this unconscious girl in my backseat, another request comes in. Fuck! I forgot to go offline. I let it time out. Make sure I'm no longer in driver mode. I don't need to screw up my acceptance rate too.
I'm relieved when I finally reach the address. There's even a place to pull in. It's a high rise with a glass lobby and storefronts. I wake the girl up.
"Hey! We're here!"
I’m surprised how easily she comes to. But she’s still really out of it. I ask if she needs help. She says no. Reaches around the seat and floorboard, seemingly for her purse or phone… It doesn't look like she has either. I notice there are twigs in her hair. I ask if she’s okay. She says that she is. Opens the car door and careens into the street, in the opposite direction of the apartment building.
I yell after her, "You're going the wrong way!" Fortunately there’s no traffic. She spins around and heads towards the right building. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I call out. She comes back towards me and reaches for my hand. “Thank you so much.” “You’re going to be okay, right?” “Yeah.” She walks to the building and struggles to get through the door. A guy eventually opens it for her. She moves aimlessly through the lobby and then gets into an elevator. I can only hope this is really where she’s staying and that she makes it into her apartment. At least she’s safer here than in the Civic Center. I pull over and email Uber. I explain in my message what happened and that I’m worried about how this mix-up will affect my rating. Since I have to rate Andrea before I can go back online, I’m sure she still has the option to rate me, at least until the fare has been reversed. I’ve worked hard to maintain my 4.9 rating. I’d hate to get dinged for what was essentially an emergency situation. Why were there twigs in her hair? I checked the back seat after she got out. There was an enormous amount of crushed leaves and crap on the floorboard. More than usual. The girl may have been drugged at a bar and fell into some bushes as she wandered through the Civic Center looking for a way home. With the influx of frat bros in San Francisco, GHB is floating around everywhere now. A few months back, the wife and a friend were drugged at a bar just a few blocks from our apartment. The wife managed to stumble home, but her friend woke up the next morning in the emergency room. This shit is real. I also wish there was a way to find out if she had actually requested an Uber and just mistaken me for her driver? Or was she so fucked up that she just saw the U in my window and expected me to take her home? The use of rideshare cars in San Francisco has become second nature for most people. Maybe, in her incapacitated state, she just followed instinct. Uber, of course, would have some of these answers. They have the ability to see, in real time, all the Uber activity on the road. This isn’t the first time I’ve picked up the wrong passenger. It happened once while driving for Lyft. But that was several months ago and I was able to talk to somebody on the phone who told me he could see that the guy I was supposed to pick up had gotten into another car. Of course, that’s not an option with Uber. They have no apparent telephone support. And it’s been three days since I messaged them. I haven’t heard back. And doubt I ever will. The person reading support emails probably deleted it since I wasn’t crying foul. The fact is, we are hardly protected if we get into an accident under normal circumstances. Since there's no support number, we have nobody to call. We are told to use our personal insurance, which wouldn't cover the damages since I was engaged in commercial activity at the time. We can only email Uber afterwards and hope their insurance company decides to cover it. They also charge us a deductible. Had there been an accident while I was driving this girl home, I could have tried to use my own insurance and say she was a friend, or that I was just helping her out. But it would be difficult to explain why she was in my back seat unconscious. And I'd have to hope she would play along, if she remembered anything the next day. Yeah, a real sticky situation. It’s kind of crazy to think how alone we are on the streets while driving for Uber, of Lyft. This time, a potential disaster was averted. But what about all the other times? I’m sure I'm not the first driver to face similar circumstances. And what happens if somebody winds up in the car of a driver who isn’t as charitable? Every week there are new reports of Uber drivers assaulting and sexually harassingpassengers. It seems Uber doesn’t worry about the negative publicity, as long as Uber is in the news cycle. Despite a storied history of erratic drivers, ridesharing continues to become commonplace. For each person who decides to avoid Uber because of a potential violent driver, there are others who see the counterpoint that one could just as easily be attacked by a cabbie. Still, it’s kind of ridiculous that when they have a chance to extoll the positive aspects of ridesharing, they are just as nonresponsive. At the very least, they could have emailed me back. Told me something. As it is, for all my effort, I’m just left with an overwhelming sense of how vulnerable we are out there. Every single one of us.