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Comment by frakr | Hacker News Reader

It's also a bit worrisome that the driver apps only give the driver ~30 seconds to accept a new ride request. The requests almost always come in while they are driving.

Drivers are forced to pay attention to their phone and try to figure out if they want to accept the ride, all while driving. It's incredibly distracting and they never have enough time to pull over and safely accept the request.

This puts the driver as well as everyone else on the road at risk for no reason other than some arbitrary response time for ride requests.

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Well the arbitrary response time is driven by users requesting rides. If Uber takes that long to match me with a driver, I assume the app is busted and I switch to Lyft.

Sounds like there is need for some regulation here, because the risks of fast response time to customer are externalized to other people in traffic.

There could be a law that a driver must have at least one full minute to accept a request. That would help this problem, even if one minute is still a short time to pull over and respond.

Instead of building regulations around internet services to discourage bad driving, why not just enforce laws on bad driving directly? If a driver is not paying attention while driving, punish them.

Suppose my livelihood depends on using my phone while driving (which entails all of the distraction, etc. described, and sometimes results in poor driving on my part). I wonder how much enforcement would be required before I would stop using my phone while driving (and incur the requisite loss of income).

Right now enforcement is at, what, 1/1000 rides (to pick an arbitrary number)? If it was 10/1000 would it influence my behavior? I imagine that 10X or even more enforcement would be required, which may not be practicable.

That doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.

The expectations of the users are supposed to be managed by the creators of the apps. Right now, in my opinion, they are making an unacceptably dangerous compromise in driver safety for a very minor increase in customer convenience.

And is likely illegal in many places where using one's phone while driving is illegal. While this wasn't mentioned in Mr Y Aslam, Mr J Farrar and Others -V- Uber (the recent ruling about worker status in England & Wales), it does further add to the argument that drivers are not able to accept or decline rides at will, as if they are driving they are unable to legally decline them.

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