That's interesting. I wonder if this is a regional thing, or just different personal experiences. For me, I've never had a particularly bad Uber driver, but I've had incredibly bad taxi drivers. (My favorite was the guy who decided that driving down I-395 in Arlington was a good time to catch up on some paperwork. He kept the cab on the road, but only by using all three lanes. Thankfully it was about 2AM and nobody else was using them.)

While driving, I tend to fear for my life when taxis are around, but whenever I spot an Uber or Lyft car, they seem to behave unremarkably.

There's also the other side of the problem that you don't get to see as a passenger. Uber/Lyft drivers in a rush to get to their pickups drive like maniacs here in SF. I'm from a developing country and I'm used to drivers who disregard rules but even those pay attention to the surroundings - you can read them and know if they are going to yield or not. But having gotten used to the polite driving of SF a few years ago, I find it quite dangerous to walk my dog out now. I stick to interior roads and wait till I know for sure that the car would yield for me before I cross. Driving and Biking have become usually miserable as well.

My only request is that passengers don't encourage this by blindly rating everyone 5 stars. Take at least two star off for unsafe driving - not stopping at a stop sign, not yielding to pedestrians, not giving enough space while passing a bicyclist and at least one star for not following the rules - driving on the bus lane, double parking in the middle of a busy road, driving too fast on a 25Mph zone, not waiting long enough for the pedestrians to pass safe ...etc.

If the economics don't work out for the drivers, the fare has to go up. By keeping the fare artificially low and pushing drivers to accommodate too many trips Uber and Lyft are ruining the experience for everyone and in doing so are perpetuating the need for more people to use them instead of considering alternate transport modes. This, sooner or later, will ruin it for everyone.

Take it from me, America cannot handle a developing country style traffic. It requires a different set of skills. People here are used to predictable traffic.

Never had an Uber driver driving like maniac. To be sure, I live to the south of SF and try to never drive into SF unless I absolutely have to, and when I do, I pretty much expect developing-country-type driving environment. But I may just be spoiled by suburbia-type traffic patterns. In any case, even SF Uber drivers has always been excellent for me. I realize that's anecdata, so I wonder if somebody did any kind of robust survey of this.

Seconding that. I took a half-dozen Uber rides in Las Vegas two weekends ago. My biggest concern was trying to figure out how to use the app to tip them.

All drivers were cordial, polite, had no problem with routing (admittedly, it's pretty simple in Vegas). One driver was a smoker and the car smelled and that was the only negative in 6 rides.

Overall, it's the end-to-end experience. Call up the app, type in a destination, head to the curb. The car shows up about the same time I get there, I hop in, chat a bit on the way, hop out at the destination, rate & tip via the app and go on my way. The seamless experience, so far, makes up for the (so far mild) idiosyncrasies of drivers and cars.

We all have sampling bias since the number of rides we take is so small compared to the number of ride givers. I'm sure most taxi drivers and most Uber drivers are perfectly normal, safe drivers, with the outliers being the problem.

I've personally been driven by awful taxi and awful Uber drivers, though Uber so far has the distinction of being the only one to genuinely scare me driving 3x the speed he should have on a twisty road, with tires screeching the whole way.

> simply disregard rules of the road that are inconvenient for them.

There is a bit of a natural selection process to it.

If you're a cab driver, and you keep getting into accidents, you won't be a cab driver for long. If you take no risks and are constantly late, you won't be a cab driver for long. If you have a poor sense of direction, or spacial awareness when driving, you probably won't be a driver for very long.

After decades of this process, most professional cab drivers are just reckless enough to get away with it.

These Uber drivers haven't spent decades going through that process. Everyone's a newbie. The difference this time is that the risk isn't being undertaken by the company, it's being undertaken by the drivers themselves.

> Everyone's a newbie.

Not really. A newbie at being paid to drive, but in many cases, not new to driving. In my area, I can predict to the minute when I'll arrive at my destination, and what route is best at that time of day, even for a 20 mile trip and without software support. That's because I've been driving 24k miles+ annually here for nearly 30 years.

Not to mention, the driver's app has the same real-time mapping features that smart phones have. So they can avoid grid locked areas, accidents, etc. even without years of cab driving experience.

Yes, an experienced cab driver will be a better cab driver, in general, than a new Uber driver. But not enough better to keep the masses away from Uber/Lyft. Cab companies are getting slaughtered, cab drivers are panicking and two-timing or jumping to Uber/Lyft, and this is happening globally.

Are you driving for Uber/Lyft? I was hoping I would get more drivers like you, with deep experience of the area, etc; but the drivers I've had, at least during normal working hours seem to be people who don't have a lot of experience driving in general, and for example have a hard time navigating around the mountain view train station, despite google maps giving them reasonable directions.

I always tell folks in my car if we witness someone doing something daring and crazy on the road "hey, they did pull it off after all"

In my personal experiences, local drivers (ones who grew up in the city) know where they're going on Uber. Sadly I can't request for a driver who won't take 3 wrong turns before they even get to me...

I never get local drivers. Here in Austin everyone drives in from San Antonio or one of the little suburbs and tries to navigate downtown and can't figure it out at all. Don't even try to go to an event down the back roads. They won't know them so hopefully you do.

downvote drivers who make poor navigation decisions!

Wouldn't these guys get enough low rankings because of that to be kicked off the platform?

That almost makes it worse, it keeps the ratio of brand new drivers high. There's only so many people who know the city and want to drive for Uber, and they're outnumbered by those who don't know the city and want to drive.

A number of studies conclude that taxi drivers have fewer accidents, per mile, than the general population - at least in the US. I've not seen studies for elsewhere, though they probably exist.

My anecdotal experiences are not the same. The majority of taxi drivers and ride-sharing drivers have been good, with a few exceptions of actual bad drivers.

And I think the disregard for rules applies to a lot of public drivers. The Port Authority buses in Pittsburgh think they own the road.

I guess it depends on where you live? I'm in Boston, and all of my Uber and Lyft drivers have been great.

I recently went on vacation where the only option available was a taxi cab. Within 5 minutes I remembered why Uber and Lyft have become so popular. Our driver was a complete asshole, honking at everyone and almost running down a bicyclist. Plus, the A/C in the van was broken. And because it was a van, you couldn't even roll the windows down. It was a miserable ride.