Mods can move this where it belongs, but it’s kind of politics.
This case is big news up here because Ms. Josephson is from New Jersey.
But as cold as this may sound…no- we don’t need new laws regulating Uber and Lyft.
We need young people to USE THE SAFETY FEATURES ALREADY IN RIDE SHARE APPS, such as the license number and driver’s picture and the GPS map showing where your ride share car is and how soon it’s slated to arrive.
There was no reason for Ms. Josephson to get in the wrong car. Her death, while tragic, was easily preventable.
College-age kids of friends of mine tell me a) drivers impersonating Uber/Lyft drivers is epidemic near college campuses and b) young people do not by and large use the app properly- they see a car that gets there around the time their car’s supposed to arrive- they jump right in- impaired or not.
He says some of them would feel embarrassed to check out the driver’s license plate- they’d feel like they were insulting him.
I tell them my brother who drives for both Uber and Lyft routinely tells his passengers to take their time checking him and his car out to make sure he’s legit…it’s not insulting in the slightest.
Yeah I agree regulations will not work, in this situation. I have been thinking a lot about this and wonder if the uber app could not generate a code. One that only the driver and passenger will only know.
In this particular situation, I am not sure if it would save a life. Most people drinking might not even have the thought process to even use such a code.
So yeah and I get that there some instances, such as this, nothing will help if the passenger doesn’t do the appropriate steps to be safe. But what if this code isn’t generated until the uber reaches the destination to pick the passenger up? So this girl is waiting and notices the car that fits the description but when she looks at her phone, no code generated.
But yeah it really comes down to people doing everything they can to be safe. If they don’t look at the license plate, they might not even do anything else.