I've had a Lyft driver in San Jose, CA, who was not able to navigate a closed freeway onramp. The GPS map told him to turn onto the onramp, but it was closed in real life. So he drove past it, the GPS routed him to make four right turns and come back around to the same onramp. He just kept going in that circle over and over like a robot, coming back around again and again to the same closed onramp. I'm not sure if he expected it to magically open up for him or what.

So I told him to either end the ride or follow my verbal instructions, basically take the side street up to the next freeway onramp. Once he got there, he completed the rest of the ride successfully.

Well the only alternatives are driving yourself everywhere (which kinda sucks in Jakarta), or hiring several full time drivers (which I have done in the past). All of the taxi/ride share services here are unreliable. But if you want to live in a developing country, you really just have to accept the fact that most things are highly dysfunctional and unreliable.

Having lived in Bangkok, I can say there weren’t great alternatives to Grab. Traditional taxis were as bad if not worse in my experience.