Absolutely. This is a bit like a university professor feeling "richer for the experience" of "working in fast food" after deciding it'll be an interesting sociological experiment to volunteer at a soup kitchen. Interesting to try, perhaps, but a very different experience from the people actually dependent on similar service jobs for a living. I suspect he'd have learned more about the "sharing economy" by asking to people actually driving for a living about how they decide between surge pricing fares and desperate need to sleep, but at least it's moved him to share his hard-earned insight that life can be difficult for people in America that don't drive...

I'm more intrigued by what (if anything) happens to the Uber drivers that venture to pick up rides where apparently taxis dare not.

but the focus of the article wasn't really on the experience of an uber driver, it was on the demographics of uber users. that was a pretty valuable insight he got into how "sharing economy" taxis are filling in the gaps in the public transport infrastructure.