It's not obvious to me that ride-share services would be materially safer here. It seems like many of the same concerns for night-shift workers in other jobs would also apply to ride-share drivers, added to the propensity for the flexibility of those jobs to increase the number of people driving ride-shares in addition to other full-time employment.
He is no position to afford to take a taxi to get to work, regular public transit does not run at the hours he commutes, and even if he worked a 9-5, there is no public transit that will get him from the town he lives into the town he works in.
And no, he can't remotely afford moving closer to work. Being poor is very expensive.
The better way to deal with shift work is to be ultra mindful of diet and exercise since night work messes with metabolism and hormones in general. Or stop doing night shift but thats a long term solution and usually you're doing that shift work for actual economic reasons.
That's independent of still being expensive in an absolute sense.
Now, prices are almost identical in most regions.
And, as you alluded, when you're working a crappy night-shift job, you can't afford either one.
public transport was available for those times, but occasionally I’d drive as it tended to be faster - especially on the way in.
One morning I was driving back home and it was really sunny, no AC in the car, and the traffic ground to a halt on the m25. I closed my eyes and woke when the car behind beeped me for not moving forward.
Fortunatly it was stoped traffic rather than sluggish traffic.
It was the day shifts that needed a taxi - 1130-2330 for example was too late to get the last train. Work provided a taxi at those times (and on Christmas Day / Boxing Day)
I would love to see a general audit of night shift work and ongoing plans to keep it at an absolute minimum, but that's probably too utopian a project to see in this country any time soon :/.
The crime committed when two people form a lopsided employment relationship isn’t really against either of them (because clearly each is deriving sufficient utility); it’s against us.
We don’t want to be employed in this manner so we prevent the existence of these things.
Some people also prefer to work for less than minimum wage because they are on the wrong side of an information asymmetry. And yet they cannot. Because they have not sinned against themselves or their employer but against us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_work#/media/File:Child_L...
I don't want that to come back either.
> Maybe they like having sunlight in their free time instead of their work time.
With a real night shift (3rd shift) your body would strongly want to sleep through all the good sunlight anyways. And if you do stay up for it, well good luck enjoying any part of the day.
Anyways to some it all up, maybe PP should check out https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674238091
I'd say our default 9-5 workschedule is toxic.
I worked 3rd (11-7) and then 2nd (3-11) shifts a couple years ago. You don't end up 'having sunlight in...free time instead of work time' unless you are sacrificing sleep for it on 3rd shift.
I had a short commute and was able to get reasonable sleep most of the time, in about a year I made 1 driving decision I'd call 'bad', and that was just pulling out somewhat aggressively in front of light traffic (I started taking a route that didn't have that decision after that).
There was about 18 months where I lived in the same house as him and literally never saw him. He would leave before I returned from school and arrive home after we were asleep. In the mornings, we'd be off to school again before he woke up. Combined with him having to work 3 of 4 weekends a month, it was hard on all of us. He did what he needed to provide for us and I am grateful but I'm more grateful that he's enjoying a decent retirement today.
I switched to 2nd because the sleep schedule isn't offset during off time, but it would be a lot harder if that meant not seeing your family much of the time.
Sleeping during the morning isn't that great, you need really good blinds and sometimes ear protection because it's loud out there.
If we were build to work during the night, we would have headlights instead of eyes was a pretty good union slogan during my time.
I'm happy I moved on but would think it would be better for everyone to not work during the night as during the day.
Its a "use-equipment-at-all-costs" method praying on the social weak and un-educated.
By no means is this only "run this large piece of capital equipment most efficiently".
Many nearby places closed in part because workers had no way to arrive without a bus.
You don't seem to realize that jobs are not always in dense areas.
If the job is at a giant factory of some sort outside the city, I would like to see some sort of shuttle between the factory and a transit station. I am not sure how safe park-and-rides are during that last mile, but housing for commuters ought to be in areas dense enough to not require cars, even if the commuters are doing some sort of reverse commute.
Often not an option, as grave/swing shift often has the end that isn’t in common with day shift facing reduced frequency or no service on public transit lines.
Assuming ride share means Uber and such. AFAIK, drivers treat it as job.