I'm glad they got a fine, but I'm concerned that a) they'll go right back to discriminating when the 2-year period mentioned is up, and b) I'm not sure requiring the user to get a waiver is the right approach. It's more PII that Uber now stores and can be used to discriminate in other ways that might not be detectable from the outside.
Could it be that they launched a feature to compensate drivers for waiting around (not getting paid as the customer only pays for on trip time) and they didn't intend to discriminate? I get that big tech companies are evil, but is the theory that they intentionally wanted to cause harm to disabled people? That doesn't seem to be supported by their actions once they were notified about the issue so it's weird to see concern about them doing it again in two years.
For customers who aren't disabled, should they be able to make drivers wait around for a long time or should they pay? If they should pay, how else would they give exemptions to disabled people? If they shouldn't pay, then why would drivers sit around not making money? It seems like it's fair to compensate those drivers for their time (most jobs work like that) and if people don't have a good reason for that, they should be paying for the time they're making that driver wait.
Asking a multi-billion dollar company to make reasonable accommodations so Americans who suffer from disabilities can still use their products and services is probably not something you can reasonably compare to slavery.
Exactly. There should be some sort of governmental department where the disabled could file claims for reimbursement with appropriate paper work. Then these claims could be verified and support given in due time. Kinda like insurance work. Even further maybe there could be system of prior authorizations where eligible people can request decisions before using services.
Or, just give them a monthly stipend to cover any/all costs. They file once, get thee stupid, maybe re-up annually or every few years. It's not like their costs are going to go away - being disabled is just more costly.
Italy has(had?) a similar program for residents with celiac disease (requires a gluten-free diet). It's a max 140 euro/month stipend to cover the higher costs of groceries.
"the law of the land" is a really shitty argument for supporting something when its questioned. its an unfair burden on small businesses. large enough ones probably get enough business it makes sense to install.
Society had this debate in 1990 and it was more than a super majority that supported ADA. You're welcome to go look up about that debate that made it the law of the land, many people on this board are old enough to remember it. I promise you that people brought up the burden on small businesses back then too. It's not even a hard calculus to make if you're starting a new business. Is it worth it for me to open my business while paying the costs to ensure that everyone has reasonable access to my services. If you choose to put in steps, or have an old building with steps then you can decide the tradeoffs. If you're renting you can probably negotiate those costs with your landlord as the improvements will continue beyond your lease. These aren't surprise costs, they can be made ahead of time to decide if you have a viable business.
I've always wondered about stances like this: if the US economy ever falters will you consider whether these extra costs could have an impact on it? If enough people run the calculus that the business isn't worth opening then you end up with communities that don't have businesses serving them.
Villages in my country are losing their only stores because the stores don't get enough business to make it worth the cost. These are usually villages with a high average age. What happens to the residents? Many of the elderly don't have a car. They can't exactly go over to the next town and buy a week's worth of groceries if they can't carry these.
The store closing essentially kills off the village over time. Heavy additional costs to doing business can mean that a community just goes without any service at all. It might not be a common issue now, but if it ever does appear then it's not like you can turn the economy back on like you would flip a switch.
Do they have an impact? Sure. Are they large? In most cases no. A well kept and safe building is usually not going to have much trouble getting compliant. And once it’s compliant there isn’t much upkeep. If a business shuts down because of ADA costs, what is more likely is the building has major issues and it’s not worth throwing any more money at it. It’s a dying business.
Also, there is no ADA compliance inspector. One of their customers would have to sue or report them. If they get reported then the remediation is to come up with a plan to address the concerns in a reasonable time. You really only get in trouble when you start willfully refusing to address issues. Again, businesses have had decades to address these. If they close and kill a town now, it’s because they didn’t do the right thing when times were good for them.
how you answer that question depends on whether you're the one who needs the ramp.
my mom renovated a hotel. she kicked up such a fuss about having to put in an expensive elevator. a couple years later, I became a wheelchair user. without the elevator, I couldn't stay with her. she hasn't complained about the elevator requirement since, for some reason.
But that is not the disabled person's fault. It is Uber's fault due to how they pay their contractors. If the contractor waiting around is actually "working" then they should be paid by Uber for that time.
Aren't you paying for person to provide you a time slot in their vehicle plus distance travelled? So equity would be to pay for both for same rate as anyone else.
The customer doesn't set any of that. That is between Uber and their drivers. Uber has a legal obligation to not charge different prices with reasonable accommodations to someone because they're disabled. They can of course pay the driver more, but that is between the driver and Uber.
Dictionary definition is: "the quality of being fair and impartial."
To me paying same for the same resources is fair and impartial. Paying less is unfair and exploitative. Exploitative and being partial toward the possibly rich party that is the service buyer.
Because we are all citizens and all human beings, even the one with disabilities.
This is something that we, as a nation and a society, decided years ago, and we shouldn't throw out our ideals because they're inconvenient for tech companies.
I am saying disabled people should pay more, and the state should give them free money to cover the higher costs they incur for day to day services.
Trying to get every business to charge all customers equally, even when some customers are far more costly to serve is a bad model. Better to just let the business charge whatever the real cost of providing the service is, and directly subsidize the disabled person to cover that increased cost.
That's the wrong view. The state is subsidizing the disabled residents, so they can live their lives without undue burden. Those subsidizes might be used with Uber or a regular cab or some other transit provider.
And? We wouldn’t be reimbursing just for Uber, it would apply to any transit (I’m assuming taxis have the same problem). Running Uber out of business isn’t the point. Making the lives of citizens easier is the point. If Uber can make a business out of that, more power to them.
Are you suggesting disabled people receive a regular fixed sum from the government, or that they'd have to individually apply each trip for the compensation? Both seem problematic/inefficient to me, compared to having Uber being able to, for instance, reduce/offset their reportable taxable income to compensate for the cost of providing services to disabled customers.
>Are you suggesting disabled people receive a regular fixed sum from the government, or that they'd have to individually apply each trip for the compensation?
In France you get both.
A fixed sum for your handicap+a bit more money if you have rent to pay, which amount to +/- minimum wage(which is very livable in most cities besides Paris)
And you get free cabs/transportation, my neighbor's kid get a cab every day of the week without having to pay a cent, same for a lot of kids in special ed, cancer patients, any serious disease even temporary mean you can get free cabs.
No, rides should be the same cost at point of sale (i.e. rider pays the same rate whether they're disabled or not) and then Uber/Taxi company bills the gov't for compensation for each trip.
Sounds equivalent to my suggestion (except it works for better for companies currently paying no corporate tax).
Just waiting for someone to come along and argue we shouldn't be providing incentives for people to become disabled...
>Both seem problematic/inefficient to me, compared to having Uber being able to, for instance, reduce/offset their reportable taxable income to compensate for the cost of providing services to disabled customers.
And this is why the US tax code is a mile long with loopholes upon loopholes. It seems far more inefficient to me to get companies to play creative accounting than to give individuals some sum of money.
Possibly, but there are surely fewer companies eligible for making such a claim than there are individuals. Depends how automated you can make it I guess. And while I'm not one to get overly upset if certain compensation schemes are slightly vulnerable to fraud, you still need to maintain public trust in such a system for it to have long term viability, and individual- based schemes are surely more expensive to police/regulate.
It's Uber. Of _course_ they will go right back to doing something unethical when the heat is off. It may not even last two years.
I really have come to believe that computer science and EE programs should include two mandatory semesters in ethics. So many of the companies in the space are laughably, comic-book-villian-level bad. People defend them because they also pay super well.
Indeed and of course I am downvoted for pointing out their Uber trashy behavior! Which is relevant to the post/the article noting their disgusting behavior against the disabled.
The driver was watching videos on their phone instead of watching the road. They are not a good target for your sympathy, independent of whether you also hate Uber.
Did you read the article? She was allegedly doing her job, looking at her work phone from time to time. Her personal phone playing a Hulu show was in the passenger seat (which she apparently was listening to).
> When Vasquez was looking at that phone for several seconds at a time, the defense writes, she was monitoring the company Slack, “doing her job.” Her personal phone, on the other hand, was significantly farther away, on the passenger seat. This differs from what Vasquez told the NTSB, but her attorneys argue the video is clear, and exculpatory: After the crash, the dashcam shows her reaching over to the passenger side to grab her personal phone and call 911.
I don't see why this is exculpatory at all — she was not supposed to be reading Slack messages, she was supposed to be watching the road, per the law. Uber did not give her permission to break the law when convenient.
Not sure how I feel about this. I see a similar issue in what I consider mistreatment of delivery workers. There have been delivery services and transport services for disabled/elderly for a while now. People have been replacing them with gig workers and I'm not exactly sure who to blame or feel sorry for.
A post a while ago on reddit was someone who was complaining about a doordasher who didn't want to wait and bring like multiple bags of cat litter like up 3 flights of stairs. The amount of inconsiderate abuse people have towards them (making them wait, navigate buildings) is a poor allocation of resources.
Computers are resources. Iron ore is a resource. People aren't resources. They're people. The problem is the tech industry trying to treat people like resources.
If the delivery people are paid fairly by the delivery companies, then they will be more willing to do a good and thorough job, which includes navigating buildings.
I've been an Uber driver, and yeah, some people are awful.
But I'm also tired of getting calls from Favor delivery people telling me I have to meet them in a parking lot three miles away to collect my groceries because they're running late going to the club, and this is only a "side hustle" they do on Friday nights. If I'm paying a delivery fee, plus a tip, I expect them to complete their jobs.
The key thing here is that the optimization model for "deciding if an employee is doing a good job" has to be more complicated than "time to deliver," or it's simply anti-human.
> The problem is the tech industry trying to treat people like resources.
Isn't that true for most types of jobs? There's a role called "Human Resources" in most medium and large sized companies. Are factory jobs leaning in to embrace the humanity of workers and not thinking of them and calling them resources? Would we find things substantially better in most fast food restaurants? Gig companies are at least letting people decide when they want to work and when they want to do something else with a degree of flexibility that seems unmatched everywhere outside of the gig economy.
When you want to get stuff done as opposed to having strikes, walkouts and other annoyances. People first and foremost want to be treated with respect, not like iron or coal or other stuff you'd dig up from the ground.
> The role used to be called "Personnel," back when people were expected to be treated as persons.
Was that before the 8 hour work day became standard? Was that before businesses were forced to stop exploiting child labor? It seems like a lot of progress has been made where things are much more humane now than they were historically. I think a more compelling argument here is that a large number of employers throughout history have been thinking of employees as cogs in a machine. I don't know that there was ever some worker utopia where they were treated like real people en masse.
The implementation of the ADA may need to be modified for modern businesses, but the underlying principle of the ADA is "humans aren't interchangeable parts." Any efficiency gains that disproportionately marginalize the disabled are anti-human, and the cost should fall on neither the customer nor the gig employee but on the business and the government.
>Any efficiency gains that disproportionately marginalize the disabled are anti-human, and the cost should fall on neither the customer nor the gig employee but on the business and the government.
But the gig employee is the business. They're the ones that are actually rendering the delivery service. The cost naturally falls onto them, because it takes them longer to fulfill this order.
Rather, the gig employee (note that word even you used, “employee”?) is a thinly veiled fiction the actual business uses to offload risks and avoid having to pay benefits.
If the gig employee was a real business they could set prices, choose how to go about doing the job (routes to take to destination, etc), market themselves instead of acting as an interchangeable cog in the real businesses’ app, etc, etc, etc, etc
Many years ago I worked at RadioShack. We changed watch batteries all the time. Zero training, just expectations.
Guy brought a watch in. I was getting ready to change it when he informed me that it was a $25,000 watch. I probably handed it back to him and said sorry, not taking responsibility for that. I was not qualified.
I can’t imagine forcing untrained people to deal with significant medical issues and be financially responsible for a fall etc.
I’ve had some severe disabilities at times, so I’ve been on both ends.
> A post a while ago on reddit was someone who was complaining about a doordasher who didn't want to wait and bring like multiple bags of cat litter like up 3 flights of stairs. The amount of inconsiderate abuse people have towards them (making them wait, navigate buildings) is a poor allocation of resources.
This sounds like simple miscommunication what the provided service actually is. When I order a package off Amazon, it gets delivered to my doorstep. When I ordered a fridge from an online retailer, it got delivered to the exact room where I wanted it, and the delivery people helped me lift it out of the styrofoam packaging. Superficially both are package deliveries, even from the same delivery company, but they are conducted and paid very differently. But which of these two can/should I expect if I order cat food from doordash?
You should expect service to your door. The main reason why I pay for delivery is to avoid the 1000’ walk to the street. Of course no delivery drivers want to do this.. which is why I hire my own and pay outside an app.
>"A post a while ago on reddit was someone who was complaining about a doordasher who didn't want to wait and bring like multiple bags of cat litter like up 3 flights of stairs. The amount of inconsiderate abuse people have towards them (making them wait, navigate buildings) is a poor allocation of resources."
That's literally the "work" part of the delivery job and the reason people pay for the service and tip.
As someone who held many many different delivery jobs before smart phones and turn by turn GPS, you used to also have to figure out how to "navigate streets" to actually get to the person's house too. That was actually the thinking part of the job, the rest of it was just mechanical. The idea that an expectancy to have delivery people "navigate buildings" is "inconsiderate abuse" is pretty absurd. It's equally amusing to consider the act of waiting somehow being abusive as it's a reciprocal component of any delivery experience.
> A post a while ago on reddit was someone who was complaining about a doordasher who didn't want to wait and bring like multiple bags of cat litter like up 3 flights of stairs.
I would say that many of those who are unable to get to the store to buy cat litter are also unable to walk up three flights of stairs to pick it up.
Recently, I was recovering from surgery and was not allowed to get out of bed. The exception I made was to slowly crawl to the front door to pick up the food the dasher had left there. Often, even though the setting was set to "deliver to me", they would leave the food downstairs.
My only option then was to leave the food there to rot and hope someone steals it. This was particularly frustrating during the lockdown when restaurants would close early. By the time the bad delivery happened all restaurants in my area were closed.
Often, I was left without any options. I did cook food beforehand but sometimes even thawing food can be too much while you are recovering.
Getting the entire order reimbursed would mean that the delivery person won't get paid for the delivery at all. I did feel bad about it at first, but they could have kept their promise and brought it to me.
One option would be to allow Dashers to filter between "leave on front door" and "deliver to client". But no, I don't believe that I should feel bad for someone who lied about being able to fulfil the company's promise. Especially once it became a pattern.
I ended up ordering a lot of pizzas during that time, even if I don't particularly enjoy them. Old-school pizza delivery persons would not only deliver to my apartment's door but some would even offer to bring trash or recyclables downstairs for me.
I'm glad for this finding, I suppose, but the world discriminates against disabled people in many more ways than this without any obvious recourse. As just a personal example, I'm over 6 ft with 10 screws in my spine and really can't ride in the back seat of a standard sedan for more than a few minutes without being in quite a bit of pain. Ever since Uber started the "no passengers in the front seat" policy thanks to Covid, that means I can only take Uber XL, which costs more no matter what. It's even worse for air travel, since I can only travel 1st class for anything more than a local flight. Airlines are only annoying most people when they squeeze us for space to the bare minimum of an average-sized, completely healthy person, but for others, they've giving us spasms and leaving us hobbled for hours after the flight.
Instead of a seat I'd prefer padded roller beds like that commercial starship in the 5th Element (movie). Please let me relax in an isolated storage pod. Bonus if these are modular and can be loaded in the terminal then computer packed into the aircraft.
I've stayed away from Uber ever since their first scandal, and it keeps getting "better". How fucked up can it get? They already killed someone with their shitty "self-driving" car... now this.
I was recently in a wheelchair for a few weeks. Uber's ADA issues go beyond the scope of this lawsuit. Uber would consistently lie about the availability of a WAV vehicle, showing one as being nearby with low wait. Then when I would order it, either nothing was available or the wait time was completely insane. I never successfully hailed one.
> Therefore the court ordered that the Commission to propose a comprehensive plan that provides meaningful access to taxi services for passengers using wheelchairs. The plan must include targeted goals and standards as well as anticipated measurable results. Furthermore, until such a plan was proposed and approved by the court, all new taxi medallions sold or new street hail livery licenses or permits issued by the Commission must be for wheelchair accessible vehicles.
While this is more expensive for the taxi company to have ADA vehicles, that cost is spread out across the entirety of the customer base.
The difficulty comes with ride share that aren't licensed and displace taxi services resulting in difficulty spreading out the cost across all taxi rides... and that the ride share drivers (and companies) don't provide sufficient coverage is compared to the requirement for licensed taxis.
>> The difficulty comes with ride share that aren't licensed and displace taxi services resulting in difficulty spreading out the cost across all taxi rides... and that the ride share drivers (and companies) don't provide sufficient coverage is compared to the requirement for licensed taxis.
Wouldnt it make sense for Uber to subsidize the ADA compliant drivers for their extra costs (or reduced yield) and then for Uber to spread that cost across their entire service?
With Uber offering poor service for wheelchairs and similar, individuals needing those services remain using traditional taxis. Meanwhile, the regular riders (the bulk of the profits for a company) switch to Uber for whatever reason. This results in that the additional costs for handling riders that need the extra assistance are not borne by the unlicensed companies that are not providing the ADA services that the licensed companies are required to.
If one was to go with a "{A} should subsidize {B} for ADA rides" this would be "Uber should subsidize taxi companies" for the increased proportion of wheelchair accessible vans and similar that the taxi companies are required to maintain.
As it is, Uber isn't spreading any of the cost of ADA rides amongst their customers or drivers because (A) Uber doesn't have a sufficient set of vehicles available to address ADA and (B) Uber drivers are discriminating and not picking up passengers that have needs covered under the ADA.
Sitting in a hospital with discharge set for a few hours from now and expecting to use Uber WAV to get home with a broken leg... this is a little worrying.
Wow! I remember an exploratory conversation I had with the CEO of a large health insurance company's individual plan subsidiary and this was several years ago, a time when ridesharing was gaining traction. They were talking about partnering with rideshare companies for alternative patient transport (for non-emergencies). I guess that never took off.
> You did your part and got your patient through surgery with flying colors. But, uh-oh, the ride your patient was expecting to get home is a no-show. What should your ASC do?
> Well, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, your ASC has a legal obligation to only discharge patients to a responsible adult when they have been under the influence of sedation.
> Unfortunately, now that Uber and Lyft are such convenient options for transportation, many patients think they can simply hop in a rideshare vehicle and that’s the same thing as being discharged to a caring family member or friend.
> However, the law in many states is still unclear on whether a rideshare driver counts as a “responsible adult” who is actually taking responsibility for the patient’s care just by stepping into the vehicle. In fact, in a recent Outpatient Surgery Magazine poll, 69 percent of surgical facilities said they never discharge an unaccompanied patient to take an Uber, Lyft or taxi home.
Are you saying that you legally can't leave a hospital until somebody else promises to take care of you? That sounds a little unsettling. What do they do if somebody just walks out?
If you have been sedated, many states have a law that say that you can only be discharged to the care of a responsible adult.
This has been an issue for me in the past when I was sedated for a root canal. I had my brother's girlfriend's father pick me up from the dentist.
As to walking out? I was in absolutely no shape to walk out.
If someone is still insistent on leaving:
> If you discover that your patient doesn’t have a responsible adult to take them home until after the procedure is complete and they’re dressed and insisting to go home on their own, your best option is to document as much as possible. Insist that the patient sign an AMA (against medical advice) form. Then write up the details of the patient’s non-compliance in an incident report in their medical record. Also, let their surgeon know.
No, the effect is also that policy can be to put you're "non-compliant" in your medical record (see your sibling). If those words don't terrify you then this probably isn't an issue for you, but for some that can be a literal death sentence.
The title is "Discharge After Sedation or Anesthesia on the Day of the Procedure: Patient Transportation With or Without a Responsible Adult" from the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology
The checklist starts out with:
> Review and comply with federal, state, and local law and regulations as well as facility accreditation requirements
> Engage the facility’s legal counsel, risk manager and/or similar role to review and address liability and legal concerns.
There are significant liability risks for a hospital to discharge a person who has been sedated to anyone other than an adult who has the obligation to give care to the person if needed.
This includes things like discharging a person who has been sedated to a ride share who then robs them (you are free to imagine worse situations). As this has happened with intoxicated people being driven home from a bar, hospitals are rightly concerned that if they discharge someone to a ride share, they may be incurring significant liability of their own.
Going back to my sedation dentistry experiences, the person who is going to take me home has to be there with me at the start while I am not yet sedated and there were a number of forms that I filled out when I became a patient of theirs identifying the people who could drive me.
The laws around the requirements and liability for a medical facility to discharge person who has been sedated do not give much wiggle room for the hospital to get out of that liability.
>Uber would consistently lie about the availability of a WAV vehicle
Uber lies about the availability of all vehicles, I think! I live in a town where there are no Uber drivers, but if you open up the app it will show 3 available with times and prices and even let you book one! Of course it doesn't exist and they will never show up. I am not sure why they do this other then to look like they have coverage to shareholders or something.
Not defending the practice (which feels so dishonest) but it's a chicken and the egg thing of their on demand drivers system.
I know there are drivers who basically sit at home and check the current rates and when it's "worth it" to them they walk out and jump in the car and do a few rides.
That wouldn't happen if people were looking in the app seeing no drivers and not putting in that they needed a ride.
On the other hand, actually having at least one real driver would a) allow that driver to make bank by being basically a monopoly, until b) other real drivers saw this and entered the market making everything kosher.
I was under the impression that the drivers had some input into what they would be willing to drive for and competition would do the rest. But if Uber has internal caps, that would make critical mass impossible in smaller towns.
No because Uber's reimbursement for their drivers is so low that most lose money once expenses get factored in. This is because I er looks at drivers as an expense and have consistently cut rates over time.
That is a good point, I was under the impression that the drivers had some input into what they would be willing to drive for and competition would do the rest. But if Uber has internal caps, that would make some small towns just untenable.
Agreed, I also live in a location with effectively no drivers and I have the same experience. I'd say based on that, the claim that it is specific to WAV is not the case.
This is true, but while that is annoying for an able bodied individual, it can be a crisis for someone who is not. The one time I successfully called an Uber WAV only to have it be a crazy long wait, I canceled not because of the annoying wait because by then I had no faith that I would ever be able to hail a ride back, and I was trying to get to an area with steep hills in every direction.
They do that about everything. There are consistently a dozen nearby "available" drivers in the downtown area where I live within a 5 minute drive and I don't think I've ever actually gotten one of those drivers. I also frequently need rides early in the morning/late at night because of a weird work schedule. They also prominently advertise a discount for reserving a car two hours in advance and then proceed to charge me $15 dollars more than what it costs to get a ride at the time of night normally. It is worth it, so that I know I will have a ride at that time and that they will be there when I get out of work and I don't want to wait around for 30 minutes at 4am just to go home. But don't piss on my shoes and tell me its raining.
I stopped using Uber because their drivers kept ditching my pregnant friends.
The second they see them, they cancel and bail. Lyft was far more supportive.
I occasionally lose my eyesight due to a neurological condition. Getting either an Uber or a Lyft while visually disabled is a bit of a crap-shoot. Half the drivers I've summoned would just give up when I asked them to honk their horn or shout so I could hear where they were parked.
"Millions" are just a minor inconvenience for either company. They'll factor it into their cost of doing business and get the next round of investors to fund it. Sadly, this kind of thing is going to go on for a while.
Why is this company allowed to exist? I feel like things like this are an instant like [X] where the company should just be actually taken down entirely and the owners thrown in prison.
Same with extremely scammy health insurance companies like United Healthcare.
I legitimately do not understand why they are allowed to exist with blatant criminal behavior.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadFor customers who aren't disabled, should they be able to make drivers wait around for a long time or should they pay? If they should pay, how else would they give exemptions to disabled people? If they shouldn't pay, then why would drivers sit around not making money? It seems like it's fair to compensate those drivers for their time (most jobs work like that) and if people don't have a good reason for that, they should be paying for the time they're making that driver wait.
Reasonable accommodations.
Italy has(had?) a similar program for residents with celiac disease (requires a gluten-free diet). It's a max 140 euro/month stipend to cover the higher costs of groceries.
Villages in my country are losing their only stores because the stores don't get enough business to make it worth the cost. These are usually villages with a high average age. What happens to the residents? Many of the elderly don't have a car. They can't exactly go over to the next town and buy a week's worth of groceries if they can't carry these.
The store closing essentially kills off the village over time. Heavy additional costs to doing business can mean that a community just goes without any service at all. It might not be a common issue now, but if it ever does appear then it's not like you can turn the economy back on like you would flip a switch.
Also, there is no ADA compliance inspector. One of their customers would have to sue or report them. If they get reported then the remediation is to come up with a plan to address the concerns in a reasonable time. You really only get in trouble when you start willfully refusing to address issues. Again, businesses have had decades to address these. If they close and kill a town now, it’s because they didn’t do the right thing when times were good for them.
my mom renovated a hotel. she kicked up such a fuss about having to put in an expensive elevator. a couple years later, I became a wheelchair user. without the elevator, I couldn't stay with her. she hasn't complained about the elevator requirement since, for some reason.
You're confusing equity and equality.
Charging the same per minute/mile is equality. Charging the same per ride is equity.
To me paying same for the same resources is fair and impartial. Paying less is unfair and exploitative. Exploitative and being partial toward the possibly rich party that is the service buyer.
Because we are all citizens and all human beings, even the one with disabilities.
This is something that we, as a nation and a society, decided years ago, and we shouldn't throw out our ideals because they're inconvenient for tech companies.
Trying to get every business to charge all customers equally, even when some customers are far more costly to serve is a bad model. Better to just let the business charge whatever the real cost of providing the service is, and directly subsidize the disabled person to cover that increased cost.
/Unpopular opinion
In France you get both.
A fixed sum for your handicap+a bit more money if you have rent to pay, which amount to +/- minimum wage(which is very livable in most cities besides Paris) And you get free cabs/transportation, my neighbor's kid get a cab every day of the week without having to pay a cent, same for a lot of kids in special ed, cancer patients, any serious disease even temporary mean you can get free cabs.
And this is why the US tax code is a mile long with loopholes upon loopholes. It seems far more inefficient to me to get companies to play creative accounting than to give individuals some sum of money.
I really have come to believe that computer science and EE programs should include two mandatory semesters in ethics. So many of the companies in the space are laughably, comic-book-villian-level bad. People defend them because they also pay super well.
Even after Travis they continue to be an Uber disgusting company.
https://www.wired.com/story/uber-self-driving-car-fatal-cras...
Modern times call for modern idioms: "threw them in front of the Uber".
> When Vasquez was looking at that phone for several seconds at a time, the defense writes, she was monitoring the company Slack, “doing her job.” Her personal phone, on the other hand, was significantly farther away, on the passenger seat. This differs from what Vasquez told the NTSB, but her attorneys argue the video is clear, and exculpatory: After the crash, the dashcam shows her reaching over to the passenger side to grab her personal phone and call 911.
A post a while ago on reddit was someone who was complaining about a doordasher who didn't want to wait and bring like multiple bags of cat litter like up 3 flights of stairs. The amount of inconsiderate abuse people have towards them (making them wait, navigate buildings) is a poor allocation of resources.
Computers are resources. Iron ore is a resource. People aren't resources. They're people. The problem is the tech industry trying to treat people like resources.
If the delivery people are paid fairly by the delivery companies, then they will be more willing to do a good and thorough job, which includes navigating buildings.
I've been an Uber driver, and yeah, some people are awful.
But I'm also tired of getting calls from Favor delivery people telling me I have to meet them in a parking lot three miles away to collect my groceries because they're running late going to the club, and this is only a "side hustle" they do on Friday nights. If I'm paying a delivery fee, plus a tip, I expect them to complete their jobs.
Isn't that true for most types of jobs? There's a role called "Human Resources" in most medium and large sized companies. Are factory jobs leaning in to embrace the humanity of workers and not thinking of them and calling them resources? Would we find things substantially better in most fast food restaurants? Gig companies are at least letting people decide when they want to work and when they want to do something else with a degree of flexibility that seems unmatched everywhere outside of the gig economy.
A title change which reflects the shift in business from treating people like people and turning them into "resources."
The role used to be called "Personnel," back when people were expected to be treated as persons.
Was that before the 8 hour work day became standard? Was that before businesses were forced to stop exploiting child labor? It seems like a lot of progress has been made where things are much more humane now than they were historically. I think a more compelling argument here is that a large number of employers throughout history have been thinking of employees as cogs in a machine. I don't know that there was ever some worker utopia where they were treated like real people en masse.
But the gig employee is the business. They're the ones that are actually rendering the delivery service. The cost naturally falls onto them, because it takes them longer to fulfill this order.
Rather, the gig employee (note that word even you used, “employee”?) is a thinly veiled fiction the actual business uses to offload risks and avoid having to pay benefits.
If the gig employee was a real business they could set prices, choose how to go about doing the job (routes to take to destination, etc), market themselves instead of acting as an interchangeable cog in the real businesses’ app, etc, etc, etc, etc
Guy brought a watch in. I was getting ready to change it when he informed me that it was a $25,000 watch. I probably handed it back to him and said sorry, not taking responsibility for that. I was not qualified.
I can’t imagine forcing untrained people to deal with significant medical issues and be financially responsible for a fall etc.
I’ve had some severe disabilities at times, so I’ve been on both ends.
This sounds like simple miscommunication what the provided service actually is. When I order a package off Amazon, it gets delivered to my doorstep. When I ordered a fridge from an online retailer, it got delivered to the exact room where I wanted it, and the delivery people helped me lift it out of the styrofoam packaging. Superficially both are package deliveries, even from the same delivery company, but they are conducted and paid very differently. But which of these two can/should I expect if I order cat food from doordash?
That's literally the "work" part of the delivery job and the reason people pay for the service and tip. As someone who held many many different delivery jobs before smart phones and turn by turn GPS, you used to also have to figure out how to "navigate streets" to actually get to the person's house too. That was actually the thinking part of the job, the rest of it was just mechanical. The idea that an expectancy to have delivery people "navigate buildings" is "inconsiderate abuse" is pretty absurd. It's equally amusing to consider the act of waiting somehow being abusive as it's a reciprocal component of any delivery experience.
I would say that many of those who are unable to get to the store to buy cat litter are also unable to walk up three flights of stairs to pick it up.
Recently, I was recovering from surgery and was not allowed to get out of bed. The exception I made was to slowly crawl to the front door to pick up the food the dasher had left there. Often, even though the setting was set to "deliver to me", they would leave the food downstairs.
My only option then was to leave the food there to rot and hope someone steals it. This was particularly frustrating during the lockdown when restaurants would close early. By the time the bad delivery happened all restaurants in my area were closed.
Often, I was left without any options. I did cook food beforehand but sometimes even thawing food can be too much while you are recovering.
Getting the entire order reimbursed would mean that the delivery person won't get paid for the delivery at all. I did feel bad about it at first, but they could have kept their promise and brought it to me.
One option would be to allow Dashers to filter between "leave on front door" and "deliver to client". But no, I don't believe that I should feel bad for someone who lied about being able to fulfil the company's promise. Especially once it became a pattern.
I ended up ordering a lot of pizzas during that time, even if I don't particularly enjoy them. Old-school pizza delivery persons would not only deliver to my apartment's door but some would even offer to bring trash or recyclables downstairs for me.
I have not gotten a direct store driver in over 2 years.
> Therefore the court ordered that the Commission to propose a comprehensive plan that provides meaningful access to taxi services for passengers using wheelchairs. The plan must include targeted goals and standards as well as anticipated measurable results. Furthermore, until such a plan was proposed and approved by the court, all new taxi medallions sold or new street hail livery licenses or permits issued by the Commission must be for wheelchair accessible vehicles.
Some additional information - https://drhandicap.com/insights/can-taxis-refuse-service-bas...
While this is more expensive for the taxi company to have ADA vehicles, that cost is spread out across the entirety of the customer base.
The difficulty comes with ride share that aren't licensed and displace taxi services resulting in difficulty spreading out the cost across all taxi rides... and that the ride share drivers (and companies) don't provide sufficient coverage is compared to the requirement for licensed taxis.
Wouldnt it make sense for Uber to subsidize the ADA compliant drivers for their extra costs (or reduced yield) and then for Uber to spread that cost across their entire service?
With Uber offering poor service for wheelchairs and similar, individuals needing those services remain using traditional taxis. Meanwhile, the regular riders (the bulk of the profits for a company) switch to Uber for whatever reason. This results in that the additional costs for handling riders that need the extra assistance are not borne by the unlicensed companies that are not providing the ADA services that the licensed companies are required to.
If one was to go with a "{A} should subsidize {B} for ADA rides" this would be "Uber should subsidize taxi companies" for the increased proportion of wheelchair accessible vans and similar that the taxi companies are required to maintain.
As it is, Uber isn't spreading any of the cost of ADA rides amongst their customers or drivers because (A) Uber doesn't have a sufficient set of vehicles available to address ADA and (B) Uber drivers are discriminating and not picking up passengers that have needs covered under the ADA.
American Medical Resource Institute guidance on discharges - https://www.aclsonline.us/blog/what-to-do-when-theres-no-one...
> You did your part and got your patient through surgery with flying colors. But, uh-oh, the ride your patient was expecting to get home is a no-show. What should your ASC do?
> Well, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, your ASC has a legal obligation to only discharge patients to a responsible adult when they have been under the influence of sedation.
> Unfortunately, now that Uber and Lyft are such convenient options for transportation, many patients think they can simply hop in a rideshare vehicle and that’s the same thing as being discharged to a caring family member or friend.
> However, the law in many states is still unclear on whether a rideshare driver counts as a “responsible adult” who is actually taking responsibility for the patient’s care just by stepping into the vehicle. In fact, in a recent Outpatient Surgery Magazine poll, 69 percent of surgical facilities said they never discharge an unaccompanied patient to take an Uber, Lyft or taxi home.
This has been an issue for me in the past when I was sedated for a root canal. I had my brother's girlfriend's father pick me up from the dentist.
As to walking out? I was in absolutely no shape to walk out.
If someone is still insistent on leaving:
> If you discover that your patient doesn’t have a responsible adult to take them home until after the procedure is complete and they’re dressed and insisting to go home on their own, your best option is to document as much as possible. Insist that the patient sign an AMA (against medical advice) form. Then write up the details of the patient’s non-compliance in an incident report in their medical record. Also, let their surgeon know.
The effect of the above is: "They're not allowed to forcibly eject you if doing so would make you unsafe"
For example, I was allowed to stay an extra night because I live alone and needed to coordinate a helper to safely go up my stairs.
There's a very specific set of reasons why they can hold you defined separately from this.
tl;dr if they do eject you into an unsafe envious they face liability, but not so much liability that they need to imprison you...
The title is "Discharge After Sedation or Anesthesia on the Day of the Procedure: Patient Transportation With or Without a Responsible Adult" from the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology
The checklist starts out with:
> Review and comply with federal, state, and local law and regulations as well as facility accreditation requirements
> Engage the facility’s legal counsel, risk manager and/or similar role to review and address liability and legal concerns.
There are significant liability risks for a hospital to discharge a person who has been sedated to anyone other than an adult who has the obligation to give care to the person if needed.
This includes things like discharging a person who has been sedated to a ride share who then robs them (you are free to imagine worse situations). As this has happened with intoxicated people being driven home from a bar, hospitals are rightly concerned that if they discharge someone to a ride share, they may be incurring significant liability of their own.
Going back to my sedation dentistry experiences, the person who is going to take me home has to be there with me at the start while I am not yet sedated and there were a number of forms that I filled out when I became a patient of theirs identifying the people who could drive me.
The laws around the requirements and liability for a medical facility to discharge person who has been sedated do not give much wiggle room for the hospital to get out of that liability.
Uber lies about the availability of all vehicles, I think! I live in a town where there are no Uber drivers, but if you open up the app it will show 3 available with times and prices and even let you book one! Of course it doesn't exist and they will never show up. I am not sure why they do this other then to look like they have coverage to shareholders or something.
I know there are drivers who basically sit at home and check the current rates and when it's "worth it" to them they walk out and jump in the car and do a few rides.
That wouldn't happen if people were looking in the app seeing no drivers and not putting in that they needed a ride.
"Millions" are just a minor inconvenience for either company. They'll factor it into their cost of doing business and get the next round of investors to fund it. Sadly, this kind of thing is going to go on for a while.
Same with extremely scammy health insurance companies like United Healthcare.
I legitimately do not understand why they are allowed to exist with blatant criminal behavior.