Nav System Slavery

The other day, I did a thing I rarely do—I took a rideshare ride. To be clear, nothing has changed as far as my use of technology goes—I still have no smartphone and have no plans of going back to having one. The Lyft was called by my brother, who was visiting from out of town. 

It took the driver several extra minutes to find us because the GPS on my brother's phone was apparently not getting our precise location, causing the driver to idle somewhere else, a block or two away. After she found us, she idled at an intersection, punching coordinants into her nav screen rather than listening to my directions. Our destination was basically a straight shot east, but her reliance on technology was so complete she didn't bother to use her own ears for information which could have saved everyone time.

My brother argued that she needed to let the app determine the route so that she would be paid properly, but it seems ridiculous to me to hold up traffic while waiting for some algorithm to tell you where and how to go when you have a living, fellow human providing directions. This is one of my biggest problems with the whole rideshare racket. There's a complete, nearly blind faith that the machines know how to navigate better than we do.

This driver was perfectly pleasant and didn't really do anything wrong. She was just going with the flow, assuming that it wasn't part of her job to actually listen to her passengers. This is the new normal. But as rideshare becomes the only public vehicle option, this aspect of the service will have to change, become more flexible. We can't be slaves to technology; it must work for us. I'm sure there's a programmer out there wh…

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The other day, I did a thing I rarely do—I took a rideshare ride. To be clear, nothing has changed as far as my use of technology goes—I still have no smartphone and have no plans of going back to having one. The Lyft was called by my brother, who was visiting from out of town. 

It took the driver several extra minutes to find us because the GPS on my brother's phone was apparently not getting our precise location, causing the driver to idle somewhere else, a block or two away. After she found us, she idled at an intersection, punching coordinants into her nav screen rather than listening to my directions. Our destination was basically a straight shot east, but her reliance on technology was so complete she didn't bother to use her own ears for information which could have saved everyone time.

My brother argued that she needed to let the app determine the route so that she would be paid properly, but it seems ridiculous to me to hold up traffic while waiting for some algorithm to tell you where and how to go when you have a living, fellow human providing directions. This is one of my biggest problems with the whole rideshare racket. There's a complete, nearly blind faith that the machines know how to navigate better than we do.

This driver was perfectly pleasant and didn't really do anything wrong. She was just going with the flow, assuming that it wasn't part of her job to actually listen to her passengers. This is the new normal. But as rideshare becomes the only public vehicle option, this aspect of the service will have to change, become more flexible. We can't be slaves to technology; it must work for us. I'm sure there's a programmer out there who can add a feature to these apps to allow for fare recalculation prompted by customers' directions. 

I'd pay extra for a driver who was able to hear my words without having to consult a screen first.

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