Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

maest

Does this mean women drivers will command higher rates?

mholm

Unfortunately necessary. Essentially every girl I know has had at least one bad experience with a creepy uber driver. These are people that are entering their address and often their workplace into the app. It's a big reason why a lot of my friends are picking Waymos instead.

hexyl_C_gut

If this form of discrimination is ok, can we get other filters?

satvikpendem

This is not new, it seems, although the previous ones were just tests: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44659635 Lyft already has such a feature, and personally I've been getting into Empower more, which also has the feature. This app pays more for drivers due to not actually acting as a taxi company but simply connecting the driver and rider marketplaces, something Uber tried to do as well but failed due to legal challenges as well as keeping margin for themselves. Empower just charged $50 per month to drivers as a subscription fee for the service and then lets them keep all the actual ride money. However, just as with a marketplace connector like TripAdvisor or TaskRabbit, your mileage may vary (literally) in terms of driver ratings and safety, due to Empower not doing as comprehensive background checks as Uber or Lyft, so it is up to your personal risk tolerance.

xenospn

That might be tough - I remember having plenty of women drivers back in 2012 when uber and Lyft just got started. These days they’re extremely rare.

cheezur

We are reinventing, from first principles, the discrimination we fought so hard against in the 20th century.

bsenftner

A population of class action attorneys just smiled. A paycheck is materializing.

slowmovintarget

The real problem is that this is necessary. This same thing that keeps on happening when we try to reinvent things "without all that stuff that just adds friction." As with software, one should understand the underlying reasons for constraints in the old system before building the second one. Banking -> crypto and NFT "without all that stuff..." -> wash trading. Taxi service -> Uber "without all that employer stuff..." -> drivers with no background checks and no interview process I understand part of this is routing around the damage of monopoly maintenance (medallion system, for example), but let's fix that instead of taking away the protections in place. Sorry for the rant. I know this is like asking water to run uphill.

AdmiralAsshat

Uber is only getting this now? Wasn't this like a core offering of its longtime competitor, Lyft?

kelseyfrog

Absolutely wild that none of the dissenting comments suggest a means of lowering or eliminating sexual harassment of women passengers. Why not start there? Get creative.

paxys

So Uber is finally dropping the pretense of "vetted drivers" and "strict background checks" and whatever else they claim in their advertising. It's good that women get this service, but I'd be pretty concerned as a man as well. At this point whenever I call an Uber it's a 50/50 whether the person and car listed in the app will be the one picking me up. A lot of times I wonder if the driver has a license or insurance at all. They've been churning through drivers so quickly over the last decade that it's now impossible to get new ones on the service without massively lowering standards and looking the other way when something comes up as irregular.

paxys

Does anyone have experience using this feature? I can't imagine it'll be easy to get matched with a female driver. From my own experience Uber/Lyft/taxi drivers are seemingly 99%+ men.

recursivedoubts

"As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all." https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm

avidiax

Uber is already being sued by male drivers in California: https://onlabor.org/january-25-2026 I think the lawsuits probably make sense. While you can claim that there is a statistical danger, you can make that same claim about a number of other protected characteristics. Would we allow riders to request only female, heterosexual, over 45, wealthy Quaker drivers, if that happens to be the statistically safest driver characteristic?

buynlarge

Car share apps could have a camera and audio on mode. - The inside of the car is surveilled and made available for both parties after the ride. - The intent is made clear, that this is to capture a trace of any harassment or misconduct. Hopefully making this statement puts all parties on their best behaviour. - Any failure to comply by the driver, camera blocked or audio muffled, then driver gets penalised.

lordfrito

Sex is a protected class under Title VII of the civil rights act. And the supreme court recently said that even majority classes (men) are protected by this. Since Uber involved in the decision to send more business to female drivers than male drivers, this would seem to me to run afoul of employment discrimination (sorry we don't need as many men workers today, too many of you competing so market forces mean we're going to pay you less, etc). Can someone explain to me how this is (or isn't) legal under Title VII? It seems if this is fully legal because it's the customer making the decision, then pretty much any form of "in app" discrimination is legal as long as it's the customer doing the discrimination. How long till "I don't want a black/white/gay/etc driver" options show up? "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." — George Orwell, Animal Farm

haunter

Bolt have that too in Europe https://i.imgur.com/qAkPtbt.jpeg

zoezoezoezoe

This is a great change!

Simulacra

I think this is blatant sexual discrimination. I appreciate the sentiment behind it, but it's discriminatory. Maybe if someone can request a male driver instead of female it MIGHT eventually balance out, but I don't see this surviving judicial scrutiny.

Humbly8967

Only women can request women drivers? Ok. Will trans women and intersex people be allowed to request women drivers? They are an especially vulnerable group. What about women drivers? How will the boundaries of these classifications be determined, and what happens when someone tests these boundaries?