cross-posted from: https://lemmy.perthchat.org/post/2277

I asked a friend and he knew someone who does rides. Since then i’ve taken rides with him a few times. I basically just have to text the driver a few hours in advance since they’re just 1 person and not a taxi company with fleets to dispatch.

This avoids state or business interference.

  • @H4rdStyl3z
    4•2 years ago

    I feel like using Facebook sort of defeats the point of using a “grassroots” service.

    More importantly, if regular Uber is already dangerous for women and LGBT folks in many circumstances, an underground, unlicensed taxi service will be even worse.

      • @H4rdStyl3z
        1•2 years ago

        There have been multiple cases of women being raped and murdered, as well as LGBT people being on the receiving end of hate crimes from Uber drivers (and also female/LGBT drivers suffering the same fate from their clients).

          • @H4rdStyl3z
            2•2 years ago

            Unfortunately little. Some cases were prosecuted, Uber made some blanket statements and implemented some basic location sharing/panic button features, the effectiveness of which I have no statistics on, so I can’t really comment on that. Probably won’t fix the issue unless a systemic approach to combat it is used, though.

              • @H4rdStyl3z
                1•2 years ago

                Well, since I’m a man I’m not really qualified to offer solutions to these kinds of problems which mostly affect women and minorities, but there is definitely a fine line we must walk between breaches of privacy and safety. Ideally society in general would combat assaults against women and minorities but we all know how slowly that goes. More certification of drivers and harsher consequences for unacceptable behavior would help, but then that wouldn’t make Uber as attractive for a side-job as it currently is to many people, which would hurt their bottom line, so I doubt that will ever get done (in fact, they seem to be actively fighting against countries which try to legislate exactly that). It would also not help with the reverse situation (drivers being the victims).