Woman's Scary Story About Lyft Driver Reminds Us All To Be Vigilant

My routine when getting into a cab is to disconnect from the surroundings. I don't pay attention to where we are, I just trust that the driver is taking me to where I want to go.

Rather than calling a number and having to talk to a real human, these services allow you to call up a car in an instant, tracking it as it makes its way to your location.

Writer Kelly Barnhill tweeted about what she called a "harrowing" experience in a Lyft earlier this week. Things seemed fine as she got into the car, but that's where things got scary.

According to her tweets, he twice made unwanted comments about Barnhill's appearance, drove dangerously fast and basically held her captive in the car as he turned a short trip into a long one.

These aren't all of her tweets on the ordeal, but it should be enough to get the idea. Barnhill eventually got out of the car before anthing worse could happen.

One of Lyft's customer service Twitter accounts responded to Barnhill's story. But, as @BritBrave pointed out, a good customer service rep would do the legwork to investigate rather than just waiting for the complaint to roll in.

Many users retweeted Barnhill's story and shared their own tales of Lyft and Uber rides gone awry. This is the kind of stuff most of us don't think of when booking a trip.

@WriterkJB said, similarly to Kelly Barnhill's story, his friend was trapped in a moving car as it ignored her desired destination. When a car is moving, there's not much an unwilling passenger can do about it.

It's true. We shouldn't go around assuming all driveshare drivers are psychopaths or anything, but we surrender a lot of our autonomy when we sit in one of these cars — and this places the driver in a position of power.

Aside from the original Lyft response (which was probably just a bot), Barnhill had only heard radio silence from Lyft in the days since the incident occurred. But pressure was mounting.

They should absolutely issue a refund, and it's good to hear that they banned the driver. But it isn't like this one example will eliminate all the bad apples out there.

I haven't, but I guess I'm just lucky because lots of people have. Make sure to share your thoughts, advice and safety hints in the comments section below!