Perhaps this whole "random people using their regular car to give rides to total strangers" thing was a bad idea...
What if instead the rides were given in specially modified cars that can include some security features for both parties? And in order to pay for this, perhaps there could be some kind of central company that owned the cars and simply hired the drivers?
That's just crazy talk. Next you'll tell us there should be really big municipally-run cars that a whole bunch of people can ride at once which makes multiple stops. Insanity!
Can't really comment on that as in my city (not US) to drive for these companies you need a license. To get the license, they perform background checks, check your criminal record, ask for medical approval, etc, every time you have to renew it, and all this seems to stop a lot of bad stuff. Not saying it doesn't happen - you can't never completely stop it - but there are ways to reduce it.
Anyway, they could just allow customers to select their preferred gender, would make anyone that wants to use such option happy, and we wouldn't even have to talk about discrimination.
Legal action for picking the "wrong" option in an app? Also, "I'm gender fluid, your honor", so good luck proving anything.
By "nefarious purposes" I meant serious stuff. Some deranged fuck decides to kill (edit: a certain gender) and there's not much you can do after they point a gun or put a knife to the driver's neck. It's too late by then.
I don't know, I understand their intention, but it seems to have some flaws.
Explain how sorting the list of available passengers by gender is discrimination? It's being rolled out in huge metropolitan markets so there will be enough drivers for everyone to get one.
@flumph so, if there was a button that allowed drivers to prioritize white passengers, but there wasn't one to prioritize black passengers, that wouldn't be discriminatory to you?
The option allows customers to prioritize drivers from two of their 3 gender groups: "female" and "non-binary". One group is left out and if you happen to be in that group, you'll end up doing less trips, making less money.
I wouldn't be happy with a setting to prioritize "male", so you can see why I'm not happy with a setting that prioritizes "female" and "non-binary". You either give the customer the option to prioritize any gender or you don't.
Since they can't verify one's gender, the potential for abuse is there. A customer could prioritise these groups if they wanted to target them and the driver could also pick one of these genders if they wanted to have people of said gender in their car.