Everyone’s hailed a cab, Lyft, or Uber at one point or another. They’re necessary services considering the demand for them, and the vast majority of time, things are safe. But sometimes, things can go sideways.
We place a lot of trust in these drivers.
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.
Lyft and Uber have changed the game.
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.
One woman shared her Lyft experience.
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.
Barnhill’s driver unnerved her.
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.
Here are the details.
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.
Lyft helped…kinda.
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.
The story struck a chord.
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.
This is similar to Barnhill’s story.
@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 was a powerful reminder for Barnhill.
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.
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Lyft kinda ghosted her.
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.
All’s well that ends well?
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.
Have you ever had a bad Uber/Lyft/cab trip?
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!
