Service providers should offer their service to everyone, not just to "easy" customers. Service providers should not reject you because you are disabled, because you have a child, because you have a certain religion, or whatever else is the problem.
If someone is in the business of transporting people, they shouldn't be allowed to just pick the most profitable customers. Because if you allow that, everyone will try to undercut the competitors prices to get the "good" customers, and nobody will bother to offer services to the not so profitable customers.
There's nothing wrong with needing some special accomodations, and you shouldn't have to apologise to the driver for taking two minutes to fasten a child seat.
HAAS Act '37
NYC TLC '71
Operation Refusal '98
Not that NY has it exactly right, but at least there was some structure.
The entire business model of Uber is regulation avoidance. They did not "distrupt" any business they just did as you said and stole all the profitable easy routes/riders, avoided pricing regulations, and driver compensation regulations.
I see this complaint all the time and I truly can't wrap my mind around it based on my own experience. The difference between yellow cabs and Ubers is night and day. I've had countless cabs drive away and refuse to pick me up because they didn't like where I was going, and that's never once happened with Uber (I'm sure it happens some behind the scenes but once I get matched with a driver it's very reliable).
There's even an entire industry in NYC of "gypsy cabs" in some of the outer boroughs, because the limited number of medallioned yellow cabs never go out there since it's not profitable enough.
If I'm going to take uber to the airport, I'm careful now to leave an extra 30 min over the two hours I would normally plan for.
now it doesn't make sense because they know where you're going before they accept.
some have told me that if they reject too many rides the algorithm punishes them.
There's a lot of institutional knowledge baked into the cab industry and Uber/Lyft thought they could figuratively reimplement the whole deal in a weekend.
We impose a lot of duties on people who are employed in the service of the general public. Humans are messy, unpredictable, inconsistent beings with unique needs so, yes, it is possible that two humans will be a mismatch for each other in the public sphere.
The law, and society in making that law, has generally decided that the right of a person with particular needs--such as a service animal or a carseat--outweigh the rights of someone to ply a trade in a customer-facing role. And, given the level of discrimination that people with those needs experience on a daily basis, I happen to think this is a fair trade-off. The person with the needs may not have a choice, or may have fewer choices, than the service provider.
What should happen is allow drivers to get a doctor's note that marks their car as unstable for allergies (that way they can't make it up to discriminate). Also allow customers to mark themselves as needing to avoid animals or needing animal-friendly cars. You don't even have to show this information to either party: Uber can automatically choose the right car.
The law doesn't say every single driver has to pick up people that need service animals. It just says reasonable accommodations must be made.
[0] https://www.aafa.org/asthma-allergies-and-the-american-with-...
Of course, a simpler solution would be to have Uber choose an appropriate car that was willing to give rides to service animals.
I also think it should be fine to have a "no children" policy, we have all kinds of business we do not allow children in, and personally i would like to see more business adopt a no children policy.
Rather, Uber needs to offer accommodations to drivers. Modification of the vehicle so that the driver and passenger areas are separate and the there is sufficient air filtration.
This way, Uber would be handling both disabilities appropriately with the ADA by providing the respective accommodations.
But what about a more common and realistic scenario, where the driver doesn't have the allergy, but the next Uber passenger does (the one who gets into the car after the passenger with a dog leaves)? Do you propose to perform full sterilization of the vehicle after every passenger with a dog (and I mean an actual full sterilization, not just wiping the seats clean)? Because otherwise, the dog dander particles will still be present in the vehicle in some capacity, thus causing an allergic reaction in the next passenger who has allergies.
Blind passengers need to have reasonable access to cars. If Uber wants to play in that market, they need to figure out how to accommodate those passengers. If the driver needs a screen, or a stack of N95 masks, to avoid allergies, that should be Uber's responsibility to provide.
Ideally that premium should mostly go to the driver, minus the regular Uber cut.
Should drivers with life-threatening allergies be expected to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars extracting a deposition from a medical professional to avoid being killed by a dog?
Until we do, are there any other forms of work that you feel that an employee/contractor/etc. should be able to shirk by claiming that they have a medical condition, without providing a shred of evidence thereof?
A medical note for a chronic, life-threatening condition is a sufficient, and reasonable requirement, and is good from years to decades.
But my thoughts drifted to what if a driver without allergies picked up a passenger with a service dog, that driver would then presumably need to spend time vacuuming the car such that another passenger with allergies isn't also impacted?
Imagine if the Uber driver himself had a dog, and showed up to pick an allergic passenger up. What would the reasonable accommodation be in that case? Depending on how severe an allergy is, no amount of vacuuming is going to make a ride in such a car pleasant for the passenger.
My local council's guidance on the topic:
https://www.bristol.gov.uk/licences-permits/exemption-wheelc...
I try to make up for this by telling the driver to start the ride the moment I arrive and not end until I leave, but not everyone does that.
Holy red herring, Batman. Are you serious equating drunk people with disabled people who need physical accommodations? The ADA does not have anything to say about mandating accommodations for drunk people.
Separately, people who are incontinent actually, you know, do things to manage their condition (like wear adult diapers as necessary). They aren't just randomly shitting everywhere. Your contrived examples are just downright offensive.
1. It was in response to the poster that put forward a proposition that any and all passengers must at all times be taken; let's not take the response fully out of context just to attack it with outrage.
Similarly, I charitably assumed by "drunk & incontinent" they mean, literally and as written, "those who are irresponsibly drunk to the point of losing control over their bodily functions"; not those who may have a permanent and manageable/managed medical issue.
2. In practical terms, if I may be blunt and practical for a second, a e.g. service animal shepherd: a) Legally and morally SHOULD be allowed b) ...Yet is absolutely equivalent to a vomiting drunk in terms of cleanup expenses (and in some ways worse - follow-up passengers may have severe allergy issues, or even the driver themselves!)
There's no easy "win" here. We have to acknowledge the necessity of regulating/providing for all; but also the non-zero impact on the actual real live person driving the car. They are human too!
I know which I'd rather clean up after
I may rather clean up after a service animal; but it might well take me far longer, and thus incur a higher real cost on business - it's all very circumstantial. There are shepherds (a common service animal) that will saturate a closed vehicle with hair in 2 minutes - front, back, between the seats, under the carpet, on the ceiling, everywhere. And the hair gets tangled in the fabric weave so you need special rotary brushes or hours of painstaking manual work to remove. Whereas some vomits, disgusting as they are, are 3 min with a cloth and bucket.
Anyhoo - point being, there are desirable things we as society want to see; but we shouldn't be blind as to impact/cost that those goals have on those who are on point to actually enact them; and at the very least they should have our empathy, if not ideally an attempt to compensate/accommodate/compromise.
There are many time I have Uber driver cancelling my ride from the airport because my destination is not the big metro center, rather, just outside of it. The driver was quick to accept the request, then called and then cancel the ride. Of course, the driver would said the customer "request the cancellation".
This wasted so much of people's time.
Please don't tell with all those smart people Uber have in their payroll couldn't figure out this. Or they simply ignore it.
We should not let ride sharing services just gut this aspect of hired car service.
"The free market" isn't an answer to everything. We decide as a society that some forms of market pricing are not allowed. For instance, I can not pay children to work for me. I can not pay a woman less than a man. I can not pay an old person less than a younger one. I can not refuse service to someone who has a disability. These are social choices that we make, and I would argue that we SHOULD make, to restrict the free market in ways that benefit society as a whole.
If someone is drunk enough that he's going to piss and throw up in the car, it might be a better idea to call an ambulance instead.
But to be honest, if you are in the transportation business, someone is going to fuck up your car sooner or later, and you really need to take potential cleaning costs into account. That's just part of the job.
Don't want your car to get dirty from driving people? Then don't offer to drive people.
I must have read your comment wrong. Sorry if I misrepresented you, but I can’t figure out where I’ve gone wrong.
The problem is that Uber is getting work from the driver in order to meet Uber's obligations but without compensating the driver. The extra work required to e.g. clean the interior of the car after a service dog has been transported should be paid by Uber to the driver.
Uber does provide training that says drivers must accept service dogs. However, if there are issues, they are uncommon enough and the likelihood of a driver getting sued is low enough that a driver may just drive away.
My gut tells me that drivers should be employees, or limits should be placed on using single-person independent contractors to provide a service like this. It's not going to solve every problem and the traditional "taxi" mentality is going to remain, but I remember the early days of Uber when drivers could not reject too many rides and stay on the platform, and it did seem to solve some of the management problems with drivers. Heck, maybe the answer is to contract the work out to car management companies with real HR departments like the airlines do with regional jet flying, so that Uber can insist on their high quality product and performance metrics and drivers can be employees.
They're not a charity. If you want to help the less fortunate, then donate directly to them.
Or if you believe that helping the less fortunate should be something people should be required to do, under pain of imprisonment, then advocate taxing people, and using that revenue to directly subsidize the less fortunate.
There's no reason the mandatory charity should fall entirely on service providers. It's not even an efficient way to help the less fortunate. If they received cash subsidies instead, then service providers would crop up that specialize in servicing people who have their disability, and would provide a far higher quality of service per dollar spent.
Uber, Bank of America, and Blue Cross are big enough they can handle mixing the more and less valuable customers themselves, and don't need a government program.
I'm arguing that we shouldn't be forcing private companies, large or otherwise, to fulfill social justice agendas, because it creates an unstable business environment where firms can be encumbered by any conceivable regulatory barrier to participating in the marketplace. It's also mixing concerns, leading to less optimized and well thought out social interventions. For example, forcing banks to lend in high-credit-risk neighbourhoods turned out to be a huge mistake, as this article from 21 years ago presciently warned:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/trillion-dollar-bank-shake...
If we do decide to force society to collectively help the less fortunate, it should be out of general revenue, in the form of cash subsidies.
If a disabled person gets $1,000 a month, they may use it for more rides, or they may find their money can go further if they instead pay to have service providers do home-visits to their place. Or they may rent special exo-suits that let them operate like a non-disabled person. Letting the affected party decide will let them maximize the return they get from the resources being allocated to the cause of helping them.
I stopped using Uber when I got a child. I didn't have the app installed for 4 years now. Simply because they don't offer a service with child seat. I'm not bringing my own child seat, no way. Instead, I'm using bubs taxi in Sydney that will come with child seat and other stuff that may be necessary when you travel with a toddler. They target families with kids. If we to follow you "obligation" on the companies to serve anyone, there would be no bubs taxi for me to use.
What about the incorrect political beliefs, are you saying I have to transport a Republican? or a Nazi?
Perhaps the government could subsidize the lost time. However expecting workers to do more work for less pay is not in line with human nature.
Having children is expensive, and parents should be factoring in paying extra to do things.
The problem you are outlining is that picking up non-special needs customers is the most profitable way to be an uber driver. If there was a bonus for picking up "special needs" passengers, the incentive problem could be fixed. Right now, "special needs" passengers just get worse service, and it will always be this way unless human nature fundamentally changes or they gain a way to signal to drivers that it will be worth the driver's extra time.
Many Uber drivers barely make minimum wage.
Because they're legally allowed to be underpaid contractors. The law should be changed to fix the root cause, not to change this side effect. Uber drivers aren't barely making min wage because they have no incentives to pick up disabled people ...
People seem to have this mythical belief that uber can pay every driver to drive a brand new car, at 100/hr, providing the best service for every customer every time all for 1/2 the price of a taxi
It simply not economically possible
Uber's business model of trying to disrupt the taxi service by ignoring regulations is at issue here. With the ADA, they've encountered an issue that the court is not letting them ignore.
That really depends on the location, and many are not profitable and in some area many only service some parts of the town / city.
Sure if you are in a large city like NYC, LA, Chicago etc, then it would be different but if you start getting out of the top 50 cities the profitability starts to drop
Also clearly taxi's are not providing the service at the value demanded of users or Uber would not exist
Anyone knows that getting to 80% is easy, getting from 80-90 is normally $$$$ and getting to 99.99999999999995% which is what the thread it about is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
In the UK (and EU?) those are 'protected characteristics' that it'd be illegal to discriminate against. I suppose you could ask 'for information purposes', but you'd have to be prepared to defend yourself, proving that it didn't affect the service received.
> and then give a bonus to the driver for picking me up.
Like that. Of course people are free to think 'this driver was an unusually nice guy to me and went above and beyond to help with my wheelchair', or whatever, but it absolutely couldn't be required of the customer. You can't have a 'parent or guide dog user' surcharge.
The extra cost should be born by society, which is where the requirement comes from. If we think the disabled should ride for the same price we should make that part of medical coverage and pay the driver for the extra time spent.
As is, any sensible driver will ditch these fares with any means possible. More work, less money, and generally bitchier customers. The next time your fare comes up they'll pull over and take a bathroom break rather than responding.
If we want something, we have to pay for it, not try to stick someone else with the bill.
Is 'this attitude' mine (GP's)? As far as I'm aware I simply described the legal reality.
The point is that the driver may not 'ditch these fares', and that Uber (et al.) simply bares any difference as the cost of doing business.
They are not allowed, by law, to discriminate between a disabled passenger who 'takes too long', an able-bodied speedy passenger, and an able-bodied passenger who 'takes too long' for unforeseeable reasons, so it is just what it is (the 'forseeable' as the 'unforseeable').
We want a minimum wage so we go after the only person paying someone, the boss, and demand that they pay more. If instead we paid a (temporary) UBI to bring up the compensation it wouldn't all fall on the business owner and we wouldn't have to force them to do it.
We want morbidly obese people to be welcome on airplanes but we forbid the airline from charging them for all the seats they consume.
If we want people to pick up the disabled, and not shirk the task, then we shouldn't stick them with the cost.
We should act like adults and pay (directly) for what we want, what we feel is right - trip subsidies for medical reasons.
Of course without anything in place there is effectively no accommodation whatsoever which seems to be one of the things that lead to this penalty (with probably more to come if more people are treated badly because of a disability).
I am (only infinitesimally less than) 100% sure you cannot have a guide dog surcharge in the UK. (Nor can you refuse them.)
No. The real problem is that a person with a disability was denied service in violation of the ADA.
There's no setting in the app that prevents a driver from saying (as they should), "Get in."
> In 2014, The National Federation of the Blind in the US sued the ride-sharing app over guide-dog regulations.
> The case was settled in 2017 when Uber agreed to ensure its drivers knew they were legally obliged to provide service to people with guide dogs.
So Uber have clearly failed to train their drivers to treat disabled passengers in the right way. There are definitely lots of problems that could be solved with a better UI but this isn't one of them.
It is probably more accurate to say that Uber chooses to not provide this sort of functionality.
https://www.uber.com/en-TR/blog/uberfamily/
Several years ago, Uber had a big problem in eastern Canada where parents of young children would show up without a car seat. In Ontario law at the time, taxis were considered public transportation so children did not need to be put in car seats, but Uber was considered private vehicles - they were required to.
Also, the change I'm proposing changes the fee structure as well. I'm sure they do deep analysis any time they change the fee structure. It would probably take a ton of effort to add what I suggest.
I think they should do it, but it probably doesn't come up often enough to be worth it.
> I think they should do it, but it probably doesn't come up often enough to be worth it.
That's the thing, it's not worth it to the people that are not affected by these situations. To those that are, it's life changing. Which is part of the reason ADA appears to side so heavily with those with disabilities. A tiny inconvenience to a driver means a blind person can make it to work on time. The driver should of course be compensated for their time and any cleanup required should also be covered - that's a no brainer.
Totally understand the fear of dogs or allergies, but people systematically abuse those situations which further reduces ease of access for those with real disabilities. Emotional support animals on planes for example - plenty of people need them but a lot of others just used it to get their animal on the plane.
This feels like a misrepresentation of the kind of effort required. For a company of Uber's scale such an effort barely registers. And they could go live with the change in selected markets in the interest of minimizing it even further. But at the end of the day this isn't a matter of effort but of reward, and Uber probably sees none.
You have that backwards. For a company of Uber's scale, this is a major initiative. For a small company they can just code it up and put it in the app.
Uber has all the resources needed to implement this, they don't need to outsource, they don't need to commission studies, they have all they need upfront because it's the same skills and resources that make them money now. If they saw an opportunity they wouldn't have left money on the table.
When I drove for Uber, we received email messages every couple of months reminding us of the rules concerning service animals and people who need physical assistance getting in and out of the car.
I seem to recall that if you had the right kind of car you could mark yourself available for wheelchairs and other things. I was forever picking up people with walkers and helping them in and out, though I know some drivers never ever wanted to touch a passenger unless they were dead drunk and had to be dragged out of the car and deposited on the front lawn of the destination address. (Been there, done that.)
Maybe it's regional. Everything about Uber seems to be.
Uber had/has WAV (Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles) on request.
Uber doesn't want their drivers classified as employees because it would cost them a lot of money in benefits and possibly back-pay.
We need to fix contracting which means fixing access to affordable (ie, the same actual cost the company would pay) medical. The problem for Uber drivers is that the money they make can't pay for coverage because companies get highly discounted rates.
Some drivers may want this. Others might not. I have a hard time believing any generalization about such a large group of people.
It's the self-selected group of people who have chosen it. Much different than a random sampling.
Uber drivers have pretty clearly chosen being a contractor, and if you listen to them they say they like the freedom - require it even. You can usually moonlight as a contractor without permission from your primary job.
Other drivers, driving as full-time employees, have obviously made their decision in the other direction and seem happy.
It seems wrong to tell either that they must change.
In this case, they again made these claims.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/file/805/6/8056-Award%20in%20Irv...
The more 'hands-off' that Uber can assert that they are with their drivers, the better for their argument. They want to be 100% a middleman and 0% anything else. Ultimately, I think they'll fail, but for now, that's their strategy.
If the difference between profit and ruin is an extra 60 seconds for someone to sit down, then maybe the real solution is to pay the drivers a living wage.
I try to make up for it by telling the driver to start the ride the moment I walk up, and letting them know not to end the ride until I've left, but not everyone does that.
Have an amazing evening!!!
The ADA should protect both sides.
[0] https://www.uber.com/blog/los-angeles/introducing-uberassist...
the guide dogs should be allowed, at least that's what the article is about basically
Animals do always have to be under control of the owner though, so if one is not under control that is an acceptable reason to reject them.
And I believe the latest guidance is that basically only dogs fall under the service animal category, so random other animals people use for emotional support would not qualify either. The exception seems to be miniature horses for specific limited cases.
https://www.ada.gov/regs2010/service_animal_qa.html https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm
There are legitimate service animals for a wide variety of real conditions that a lay person could not be expected to consider. Dogs that can detect incoming seizures or problematic psychological states, and they could look very similar to an 'emotional support animal' but actually be a legitimate service animal.
Also having personally seen how poorly trained most peoples' dogs are I would be very uncomfortable having a random stranger's dog near me. A lot of the dogs I encounter on the street are neurotic wrecks incapable of passing without barking, leash pulling, or lunging.
If they were misbehaving, that's reason for them to be rejected, training or not. If not, legally allergies and fear of dogs are not valid reasons for denying access or refusing service to people using service animals. Though Uber should certainly attempt to pair the rider with a different driver first, if they have registered that allergy / fear ahead of time.
This should change. Especially on the allergy front. Forcing someone to suffer an allergic reaction because a customer has a service dog is immoral.
But, unless they are the only one available or something, there is nothing in the law saying that specific employee has to keep providing service. The company should make a best effort to remove that employee from contact, without impacting the service of the customer.
I'll let you decide who has the better case.
There's a distinction between trained service animals and emotional support animals. Both are support animals but the latter are largely untrained which is why airlines have moved to ban them. I have no issue whatsoever with trained service animals!
I think there's a conversation to be had about dogs as vicious in nature but I have been laughed out of the room when I mention this to an in-person audience. But many USPS/UPS/FedEx and now Amazon delivery people are aware of this: untrained dogs are a danger
Being able to reject work you can't handle seems like the one silver lining of being "independent contractors".
https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm
> Allergies and fear of dogs are not valid reasons for denying access or refusing service to people using service animals. When a person who is allergic to dog dander and a person who uses a service animal must spend time in the same room or facility, for example, in a school classroom or at a homeless shelter, they both should be accommodated by assigning them, if possible, to different locations within the room or different rooms in the facility.
Being an "independent contractor" doesn't absolve someone from the ADA.
That's how it works for traditional taxi companies. Uber and Lyft, not being "traditional" taxi companies doesn't exempt them from needing to follow the same rules.
https://www.thetransportationalliance.org/news/adanotice.pdf
A reasonable accommodation could be that driver's with significant animal allergies don't need to pick up passenger's with dogs. If a significant portion of their driver fleet has significant animal allergies, such that it would significantly negatively impact the response time for passenger's that need dogs, Uber would need to find a different reasonable accommodation.
I would put the burden the other way around. Drivers that have significant animal allergies that reach the threshold of a disability should be provided an accommodation of a separator between the passenger area and the driver area with sufficient air filtration.
Thus, the driver would still be able to pick up passengers that have a service animal even with allergies that extend to the point of being a disability.
I am not a lawyer, but I don't believe that fear of dogs counts as a disability.
That would be another reasonable accommodation. Not assigning driver's to those passengers would be a number of reasonable accommodations. There can be many different reasonable accommodations that can be made for a given problematic circumstance. The burden is on the company to find and implement _a_ reasonable accommodation.
> I am not a lawyer, but I don't believe that fear of dogs counts as a disability.
I don't think a garden variety fear of dogs would could (but IANAL either, and I don't know). I could imagine a case where someone has a genuine phobia of dogs, and is able to get a doctor's genuine medical opinion that a presence in an enclosed vehicle could cause severe anxiety, to the point of causing repeated anxiety or panic attacks. That kind of scenario may well rise to the level of a disability that must be accommodated.
I'm hesitant to make any broad sweeping claims about what should "count" as a workplace disability.
And now that the system knows someone has a service animal you can automatically review any cancelations by the driver and look for problems. I am actually kind of surprised that there isn't some review system already in place when a driver ends a trip early on someone. Unless the rider changes the destination, how can the driver not drop them off at the agreed upon location without getting flagged somehow?
Could even in rare cases, if there are absolutely no drivers without allergies around, offer them a bonus to take the rider anyways.
If 99% of drivers check that box, and it affects service times, then they will have to come up with some other option to accommodate the drivers. Prove the allergies or something, since some of them are certainly lying with prevalence being 10-20% in the US. And it would have to be a best effort, the rider with a true service animal is legally protected and a driver with allergies or fear is not a legal reason to reject service altogether.
I don't think you are allowed to require riders to say they have a service animal when requesting a ride.
I would think Uber would want to handle those sort of compliance issues before the driver gets there. As you don't want the driver to get something wrong. And it just makes things smoother for everyone.
Not sure if they can require a rider provide this information ahead of time, before pairing a rider with a driver. But if its voluntary, I don't see any problem with making the process smoother for everyone. Again IANAL, so could be off base though.
If they're afraid of dogs they shouldn't drive unknown people for a living, just like someone who's deathly afraid of blood probably won't be a surgeon.
Allergy could be handled by Uber, who should be provided by the driver with a medical certification of the allergy and shouldn't even show that car to the blind customer (if the ADA allows that).
I think the driver shouldn't be able to see that the customer has a service dog, but I agree that they should get a compensation from Uber for doing that ride.
IANAL, but I don't think it is that simple. Small towns sometimes only have one driver at a time. If there's one driver, they _have_ to take a service animal, by law. Allergy or fear of dogs is not good enough.
Admittedly the liability for the driver denying anyway wouldn't be on the driver, it would be on Uber, but I doubt they want to be paying $1 million every time this happens.
I'm interested in this part. This seems to be counterintuitive. Is a waiter with a really bad peanut allergy required to serve a guest a dish with peanuts in it? Why does the clients (legitimate) health concerns override the drivers (also legitimate) health issues?
I'm having a hard time constructing a scenario in which the only way to accommodate a guest with a disability to the same level as other guests is for a waiter with a peanut allergy to serve a dish with peanuts in it.
In this hypothetical restaurant, presumably the waiter cannot serve this dish to /any/ guests. And the ADA doesn't entitle you to have a restaurant make food to your specifications, as far as I know.
So in your example, the business should have a different waiter/waitress provide service.
But it is a requirement that they not discriminate against customers with disabilities. Charging an "exorbitant fee" for a driver who would tolerate a service animal would be a form of discrimination, even if that fee was the organic result of a pricing algorithm.
The law sets a high standard that we should all strive to meet but the courts tend to be full plaintiffs who have been wronged by companies failing to provide even the bare-minimum service. This appears to be the case here and we should probably focus on how to grasp the low hanging fruit before trying to come up with the "perfect" solution.
Yeah in this case, a driver may have to take a service dog even if they have fear or an allergy, or Uber could be sued again. IANAL, but this is my understanding.
There's more interesting arguments to be made, like you can't ask the driver to provide proof of their allergies, and so on.
The rules are pretty clear that an allergy isn't a good enough reason to deny service, but it says that Uber should try and accommodate employees that don't want to be around dogs for whatever reason: https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm
You need to read the rules more carefully: they mean Uber, in as much as it is in control of the rideshare service, can't deny people on that basis. The individual drivers can and their employer must accommodate them under the ADA.
If the drivers aren't employees and are self employed then as they are a business of less than 15 employees they can refuse anyone they want for any reason.
Not everyone has a hundred companies trying to hire them. They have to take any job they can get to pay their food and electricity and mortgage and health insurance and child support and all that bullshit. And some of those people have PTSD from dogs.
If you create two classes of driver, one who has to follow the ADA and one who doesn't, you've just repealed the ADA.
For that matter, a driver with a severe back problem shouldn't be forced to help a disabled customer with lifting their luggage into the trunk. A different driver should be found. ADA should support both individuals in being safe.
Please note that this suit is not about a person with PTSD being forced to drive a guide dog. It’s about a person who has a guide dog continuously being denied reasonable accommodations.
If you work in a customer facing capacity, you should be prepared to encounter service animals, full stop.
The ADA is really quite amazing.
Most employers understand this, and will figure out how to make it work (ensuring there is someone else available/on shift, etc.) If you are an Uber driver, Uber is not your employer (though they should be, imo). Prop 28 was about issues like this, but now we're expecting drivers to understand and comply with ADA regulations as individuals rather than at the corporate level.
If you work in retail you don't have the choice to avoid someone with a service dog either. It's just easier to ask your coworker to take over for you.
There are other ways to drive a car for money that don't involve interacting with people and their possible service animals.
Not all customers are happy, clean 5-star big tippers.
Certain percentage of customers are people with disabilities, drunk, with dogs and whatnot.
That's part of a job to spend occasional extra minutes per certain percentage of customers.
I agree that sometime (but not always) UBER needs to compensate driver for this and charge customer extra.
You cannot be UBER driver who is allergic to slow moving or non-tipping customers and refuse your service for them.
It should be fairly obvious why employment contracts cannot be allowed to construct an end run around legislation like the ADA (or worker safety, etc.).
Dogs send me into panic and it would be a bad idea for the law to force me to drive against it. I mean, I would because it's the law, and as a result, you would be in danger.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/168
168Assistance dogs in taxis
(1)This section imposes duties on the driver of a taxi which has been hired—
(a)by or for a disabled person who is accompanied by an assistance dog, or
(b)by another person who wishes to be accompanied by a disabled person with an assistance dog.
(2)The driver must—
(a)carry the disabled person's dog and allow it to remain with that person;
(b)not make any additional charge for doing so.
(3)The driver of a taxi commits an offence by failing to comply with a duty imposed by this section.
(4)A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.
169Assistance dogs in taxis: exemption certificates
(1)A licensing authority must issue a person with a certificate exempting the person from the duties imposed by section 168 (an “exemption certificate”) if satisfied that it is appropriate to do so on medical grounds.
(2)In deciding whether to issue an exemption certificate the authority must have regard, in particular, to the physical characteristics of the taxi which the person drives or those of any kind of taxi in relation to which the person requires the certificate.
(3)An exemption certificate is valid—
(a)in respect of a specified taxi or a specified kind of taxi;
(b)for such period as is specified in the certificate.
(4)The driver of a taxi is exempt from the duties imposed by section 168 if—
(a)an exemption certificate issued to the driver is in force with respect to the taxi, and
(b)the prescribed notice of the exemption is exhibited on the taxi in the prescribed manner.
The power to make regulations under paragraph (b) is exercisable by the Secretary of State.
(5)In this section “licensing authority” means—
(a)in relation to the area to which the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 applies, Transport for London;
(b)in relation to any other area in England and Wales, the authority responsible for licensing taxis in that area.
Fear of other people based on disability is discrimination. I have zero fear of blind people.
Fear of other species is not immoral. I'm afraid of snakes and alligators, and I'm just as afraid, if not much MORE afraid, of dogs, and my fears are justified by both hard data as well as past trauma.
Dogs aren't even the same species. It's not immoral to be afraid of them and having PTSD because of negative interactions with a particular predatory canine species is very normal.
Hopefully service robots won't be very far into the future. I don't want to discriminate against blind people. But I really don't think there is a problem with not being okay around a particular set of non-human species (alligators, hornets, lions, coyotes, dogs, bears, mosquitoes, ...)
Don't avoid a direct, clear question by painting it as non-serious.
A person with a dog will need extra time getting in and out, and the driver will need extra time to clean the car and remove any dog hair or other stains or spots. A person with a carseat like myself needs extra time to get into and out of the car while I strap in the carseat. I'm really good at it, but it still takes an extra minute or so to strap in the seat and then strap the child into the seat.
The apps need a way for me to say "I have a carseat" or "I have a service animal" and then give a bonus to the driver for picking me up. Incentivize the driver to want to come get me, and compensate them for the extra time. I'd gladly pay and extra "carseat fee" so that I don't get an unhappy driver who gives me one star just because they had to wait for me.
And in the case of the service animal, they shouldn't have the option to reject the ride and the rider should not get charged extra, but Uber/Lyft should have to compensate the driver for taking that ride as a cost the rideshare companies bear under the ADA.