Fortunately no one was injured. I was on my way to pick up a passenger, but it was only me in the vehicle.
When I went to make my insurance claim to fix several thousand dollars worth of damage to my car, I discovered that despite having done a lot of research when trying to buy the right insurance with a rideshare rider and which was compatible with Lyft's own insurance, I wasn't covered. I had to eat the bill.
Fortunately, I was a software engineer moonlighting and I had savings to take care of it, rather than a typical Lyft driver living with far less cushion.
This sort of thing doesn't happen when you're an employee. The essence of the gig economy is doing away with hard-won labor protections and increasing profitability by offloading risk onto workers, creating the statistical certainty that a fraction of your workforce will experience circumstances far more tragic than mine.
You can make the argument, "Well, they should know better, and if not it doesn't matter." I find that weak. The legal system is amazingly complex around business and fault during accidents. It's so complex, that there are attorneys that spend their entire career focusing on things like this. When dealing with insurance there is no, "Well it's ok, I'm insured." It's, "I'm insured if I can prove I didn't break any of the insurance contract rules," and the people on the other side, they're all better at this than you are. Most people who drive for Uber, etc. have no idea this is how it really is. The driving companies have pushed all this off to individuals, because they know the consequences of them getting involved, and this is why there needs to be laws surrounding things like this.
Gig work is new, and doesn't fit cleanly into the existing framework. Uber et al.'s patch for reconciling gig-work appears to many to be essentially a wholesale rejection of the spirit of the agreement, thus opening up new existential risks for those of small means.
While those arguments may land short of the complete truth, they do appear to hold some merit; Maybe it's simply ignorance, but I'm not aware of Uber advocating for a comprehensive review of how California provides life-support benefits to residents in a way that ensures their service providers are not unduly at risk relative to the general population. Instead, proposition 22 appears to be as close to 'I've transacted profitably; fuck your life, it's not my problem.' as they could hope to achieve.
That's a a failing of your local/state/federal legislators not the company.
So the problem was the insurance company, not the gig economy itself.
Making drivers employees isn’t the only solution. There are any number of profession that are required to have appropriate insurances
Either you are a platform that connects you to a potential client (like a powerful yellow page), or you are an employer.
If you use Stripe API for examples, if you follow the law, and their T&C of services, they can't force you to sell to some clients, etc.
As soon as you tell somebody how to make their money, outside of government regulations, you are in fact an employer.
Which is different from a contractual work where you can define requirements. In the case of Uber/Lyft (and other Gig economy for that matter) you do not sign a contract with each transaction you do with them.
Therefore, your contract with them, it's to pick up and drive users of the platform under terms set by the platform. This is obviously an employer - employee relationship.
Buy a two person bike and be the pedal power for a bike courier?
Healthcare industry is currently a mess. I have excellent coverage. Even still I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously.
Only when organ failure started up in earnest did doctors realize I wasn’t making it up.
Put another way:
"Thank God purdue pharma is now manufacturing the cure[1] for the opioid epidemic that purdue pharma started"
1. https://apnews.com/article/6751b84767e8a1ebbaea6cb628ac2a11
No one will help me, especially progressive leaning people. You don't get political or social brownie points for helping disabled people the way you would for other minority groups who are struggling. We are constantly ignored and forgotten.
I was in a situation where I needed money for healthcare that will never be covered by insurance, especially government sponsored universal insurance (EDIT: it will be covered eventually, maybe in 10 years). Gig jobs played a key role in my ability to purchase that healthcare and survive.
Regular employers will never hire me. Unions will never let me join them, because I can't meet their requirements and make life harder for their able bodied employees. Gig work is the only option.
Healthy people aren't nearly as caring as they'd like to believe, especially progressives.
By your account, the problem is a for-profit healthcare system. Gig work might have helped you purchase a highly inflated healthcare plan, but it doesn't address the underlying issue: that people shouldn't be forced into that situation in the first place.
You mentioned you are disabled, did you not qualify for disability insurance/SSI?
I do qualify for disability, but I can't afford the legal fees to convince a judge. My illness is very controversial and would require paying a very expensive doctor to support my case. It's cheaper for me to just pay for healthcare out of pocket. Fortunately my condition is reversible.
Edit: emeramide is currently in phase 2 clinical trials for FDA approval.
Progressives, especially in 2020, don't look kindly on people who lack faith in medical institutions. A lot of people with chronic illness have found themselves in this category after being failed by these institutions.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that there are more ideologies out there than just 'progressive' and 'anti-progressive'.
What you did to me is evil.
Europeans are just as fucked as Americans when they have this illness.
Umm I can’t see, walk straight, or think normally 4-5 days a weeks. Disability, your faking it. Doctor, it can’t possibly be that bad, your lying.
Uber and Airbnb didn't have to take a loss to employ you. You got paid because you provided value to people willing to pay for it, just like the rest of us.
That's not to say we don't need social safety nets, or that it'd work for any disability (obviously). But there is something to be said when it becomes outlawed "for your own good."
Oh really? Has Uber turned a profit yet?
Just because the business as a whole is not turning a profit does not mean the business loses money with each and every action it takes.
Social safety nets only work for people who are believed to be oppressed. So what happens is the oppressed groups just end up being the people no one believes are actually suffering.
I have no idea what this is about but there was very strong activist push to get the ADA in 1990 and similarly the ACA in 2011 but I guess that doesn't count
> I was in a situation where I needed money for healthcare that will never be covered by insurance, especially government sponsored universal insurance
No clue what this means or how you could possibly even know that.
>You healthy people aren't nearly as caring as you'd like to believe.
Bold of you to assume that I'm healthy and don't have a vested interest in universal healthcare getting passed
"No clue what this means or how you could possibly even know that."
I know this because I have the illness and have been to 40 doctors who all denied me healthcare based on this fact.
"Bold of you to assume that I'm healthy and don't have a vested interest in universal healthcare getting passed"
I edited my post to remove the "you" part so as to not make that assumption. Apologies.
Gig jobs are all that kept family off the street while I recovered.
Starting and stopping anytime as my body could tolerate. Or renting out rooms on Airbnb. Sometimes it took me 4 hours to change sheets and tidy up, but it made the difference.
Not saying their good companies. But gigs was crazy valuable to me.