I'm used to riding Lyft which uses a real picture of the vehicle. Last night, I was waiting for what I "thought" would be a red Hyundai and the driver had to yell to me before I realized that it was the car I was expecting.

I agree - it seems like much better design to tell you the color of the car picking you up :)

For those people able to see colours.

So because some people are colorblind or just blind lets not do it. Great logic.

I think we should also disable voice calls. Some people are deaf.

Agreed. I also think we should remove the displays on phones. Some people are blind.

We should remove this thread because some people can't read. Goodbye internets :(

As opposed to currently giving no indication to anyone, colour-blind users included.

I think everyone can see colors, even color "blind" people. Those folks just have a hard time distinguishing between shades of particular colors.

I don't think anyone's literally living in greyscale.

there are but it is very rare and comes with drastically limited eye sight anyways.

Red/Green confusion is quite common though, there are estimates of up to 8% of ("western") males. Definitely a number to consider if you want your whatever to cater as many people on the market as possible.

The commoner kinds of red/green colorblindness, though, are by no means absolute. Most red/green colorblind men can tell highly saturated reds and greens apart -- they only have difficulty with low-saturation refs and greens.

> there are but it is very rare and comes with drastically limited eye sight anyways.

As one of those very rare individuals you allude to (see everything in greyscale), you should be aware that my eyesight (and many people with a similar condition to me) is "limited" but not to the point where i can't cross the street or need to use a screen reader.

Having said that, even for me knowing the colour would be useful even if I can't exactly distinguish it (e.g. I'm waiting for a white station wagon, its definitely not that black hatchback that slowed down in front of me)

Zip car is the same way. They have a picture of the vehicle, but it isn't the right color, just some generic picture.

In the US market every Zipcar has its name on the back to make identifying them easier, and if you're using the iPhone app you can see the license plate as well as details about the make and model.

Currently you can't tell the colour from the mobile app but it's a good idea. I've passed it along to the mobile team to see if it's feasible.

(Disclosure: I work for Zipcar)

Please do this, it frustrates me to no end because I see a photo of a blue Audi and think I should be looking for a blue Audi but instead it's red. Pictures would be great but even just showing the color in the app is fine, as I can never find the color without going to the website.

We'll look into it. It's slightly trickier than it could be because that database field is completely free-form, so looking up an image from it or translating it is harder than it needs to be. Thanks for the input though, I've passed it along :)

Zipcar names its vehicles, though - if you only have five candidate cars (in a somewhat large 'Ziphome'), having a name is better than having a vehicle type + color as there are sometimes similar looking vehicles next to each other.

This happened to me this weekend. Momentary panic as you realize the car you're counting on isn't there, because you're looking for the wrong color.

Zipcar tells you the color though, even if the picture is misleading. It's next to the basic car info, license plate, and name.

They should definitely not be showing an image with the wrong color, but having the information is better than nothing.

Lyft provides a picture of the vehicle that will be picking you up.

Lyft provides you a picture of the Vehicle and the driver. It really improves the customer experience - I'm always interested in who my next driver will be - and choose lyft just because of this feature.

I don't really understand the need for pictures of drivers, personally (except maybe as a means of authentication/identification, but once you go past race/sex/age/etc., I'm really bad at IDing people from faces); I judge people based on a lot of things, but generally not things visible in photos. I'd probably judge someone as a driver based on type of car and condition of car more than anything else; DMV driving record, whether the person is local, etc. would be even more desirable.

As of last night when I used Uber the driver photo would cycle to a picture of the car and color. Don't know if it was a one off thing or what.

They seem to display the license plate number now. That works perfectly.

Displaying the license plate number is less useful when the car is across the street or approaching from a distance.

I also had a fun "gypsy black car running uber app trying to extort me" experience in NYC last trip, and a bunch of black cars who took 15-20 minutes to arrive (despite initially saying "3 minutes" and showing as around the corner). In a few cases I had the driver call me and give me useless directions to where he was, so I cancelled the trip and booked another Uber, and got someone dramatically better.

I apparently have a 4.6 rating.

Can you talk more about the extortion?

Given that Uber apparently drops drivers that get below a 4.5 or something, I wouldn't expect much trouble from them...

Just guessing what he meant:

The black cars in NYC with an iPhone on the dashboard running the Uber app aren't necessarily getting 100% of their fairs via Uber. If they see you as a potential client, they'll still try to pick you up off-network.

If you already hailed an Uber, an unscrupulous driver may potentially tell you "Yeah, I'm from Uber". Although I'm not sure how they'd convince you to pay cash.

I was at W NY finishing my talk for HOPE X with my cospeaker; we were speaking at 2300h Friday so we took an Uber Black from the W to the Hotel Penn around 2100h. An Uber came within 2min of us calling it, approximately the right time, and we were a bit distracted. Walked over to the town car displaying the U logo, and I don't recall exactly, but somehow "You're Marc, right?" got exchanged, and we got in.

The driver was confused about "Hotel Pennsylvania", which was funny since it is a huge hotel, but he said there was a smaller Penn Hotel or something nearby which he thought we'd meant.

We got closer to the location, but still maybe halfway, and Marc got a call from the real Uber driver asking where the fuck he was. He pointed out we'd gotten into the Uber already, and it was clear it was the wrong Uber; we assumed it was just someone else's Uber by mistake. That's happened a few times before in high-volume locations, including one where the 2 cars were from the same livery company in SF and had off-by-one license plates (ours got stolen by someone else); Uber deals with this pretty gracefully for all concerned.

We pointed this out to the driver. Told him to start the meter now, as a new ride (which we'd request); this would be approximately the correct fare, and I was going to give the guy $5-10 extra in cash to be nice. (The whole trip was approximately minimum-uber-black fare distance anyway.)

He acted like he was trying, and failed; we then got to the location, and he demanded cash. We pushed back (the whole reason for using uber is not to deal with cash, and expense reimbursement), but said if he'd give us a receipt, that would be fine. He refused. This went on a little.

I got out of the car to go inside at this point, assuming Marc would deal with it; I was mostly trying to make sure we got our speaker badges before the desk closed. I wish I'd stayed to film the resulting interaction, in retrospect.

After this, the guy actually locked the doors, got out, and then went to my friend's door. He threatened to cut him. (I'm not sure on the details; this is secondhand.) He unlocked it, my friend got out. He's a ~350+ pound ex-bouncer from Manchester, and head of security for Defcon. The driver is a ~120 pound south asian gentleman. Words were exchanged very briefly; the driver gave up and left, unpaid.

I tweeted to @ubernyc, then per their request mailed support, and they replied, but proceeded to do fuck all, as far as I can tell.

We failed as security professionals for not getting dox on the car or driver, but we were pretty distracted. I would have been really upset had this happened to someone who could have felt physically threatened by the driver.

Uber needs some superior authentication system for drivers; btle or wifi or flashing indicators on the phones themselves would be nice. Ultrasonic tones on microphone/speaker might work.

I'm used to fearing kidnapping and extortion by drivers (Middle East, Thailand, etc.), but not so much in NYC.

> Uber needs some superior authentication system for drivers; btle or wifi or flashing indicators on the phones themselves would be nice. Ultrasonic tones on microphone/speaker might work. > I'm used to fearing kidnapping and extortion by drivers (Middle East, Thailand, etc.), but not so much in NYC.

Or just better education on the lo-fi authentication you're supposed to use: have the driver ask for your name. 'Are you rdl?'

The problem is if it's not computer-driven, people who are drunk/distracted/etc. will bypass it. It needs to be automatic but overrideable, but obvious to the user when he overrides it, vs. merely omitted.

I think it's worth noting that this is a solved problem if you take a NYC taxi. (Where you also don't need to pay with cash.)

> south asian gentleman

I am not sure the word gentleman means what you think it means ;)

I had a similar experience in Palo Alto. Once I realized I was not in the right car, I just got out at the first red light.

   If they see you as a potential client, they'll still try to pick you up off-network.

That is just the beginning. Long term this will become a lot more popular both for drivers as well as for customers as they can both get more money.

> Long term this will become a lot more popular both for drivers as well as for customers as they can both get more money.

As time goes on, it would be hard trying to find the right drivers though, and having to pay cash. If only there was a service that married you with drivers through a smartphone app...

Or being able to describe yourself: Black hat, white shirt.

Errr.. relevant?