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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000·

This is easy for Uber to fix. The surge (or the calculation of drivers) just needs to be delayed by 15mins or so. He can still turn off his app, but now he'll have to do it for more than 15mins, thus potentially losing 1 or 2 rides.

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Uber presumably takes a fixed cut of the fare, so they have at least some incentive to look the other way during surge collusion. If the drivers do it simultaneously to both Lyft and Uber then both companies will be happy to see this going on.

This is not in Uber's interest. From their perspective the purpose of the surge is to get more cars on the road. They don't care about drivers, they care about fares (riders).

As far as I know, Uber does not take a cut on surge pricing. The extra money goes straight to the driver.

Increasing the latency with which you respond to conditions seems like it comes with real downsides. They should just figure out a way to punish this practice.

Or they could, you know, give them fair wages.

Uber drivers have fair wages, considering they are working in a saturated market and competing with people with the qualifications of a 16 years old teen.

There are a lot of people with these qualifications.

I believe you have to be 18 to be an uber driver.

Correct. The 16 years old bit is for the driver license where, in north america, 16 is the minimal age to get it.

Maybe a delay before you can start driving after each log in encouraging drivers to stay signed in.

Or they can have people go through the driver onboarding, google for stuff like that, and then ban teachers of this stuff when they find out about it.

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