Uber drivers in Kenya are ignoring the app and charging their own rates | Hacker News Reader

Uber drivers in Kenya are ignoring the app and charging their own rates

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111 pointsGeekette104 comments

My experience with Uber/Taxi in Sweden. Got out of ferry, need to go to the airport, 40 minutes drive. There are a lot of taxies at the ferry terminal, sure, I talked to them, asked how much is to Airport, they all replied "by meter". Well I know you can set any rate to your meter. And all of them drove that route a lot of times, nobody gave me an estimate. So I have ordered Uber. Uber driver asked me how much Uber is going to charge me, and offered that he would cancel the ride, and I will pay him directly. I declined, just because I want to support Uber. I understand, that maybe some rides are not as beneficial as others, but give me a reasonable estimate, and I will agree to it.

But this behavior of taxi drivers that would rather do one drive in 2 hours instead of 2 rides, and they make approximately the same amount of money - that is what created Uber/Lyft. Passengers frustration with the taxis.

And I had bad experiences with Uber/Lyft and with Taxi. Cars can be filthy. But what I need: easy way to order a car, know exactly how much I am going to pay (estimate is fine with adjustment to changing traffic/time), what I don't want - not knowing if they will decide to charge me between 50-300 EUR/USD. That is not an estimate.

In italy taxis are one of the most important lobbiy, along with industrial groups and beach license owners. I'm not joking

> Well I know you can set any rate to your meter.

Do you mean meter manipulation? I think that's pretty hard at least in the places I've taken taxis in. What's much more common for taxis (and much harder to prove) is taking a circuitous/slower route on purpose.

>But what I need: easy way to order a car, know exactly how much I am going to pay

Same for me, and Uber has been hit and miss on both lately.

I've both had drivers cancel on me (or even ask me to cancel so they don't take the Whuffie hit) because they don't want to go to some place, and drivers taking detours for which Uber would later charge me (as "unexpected extra time").

Somebody replied about the Italy. My experience was exactly that, in Italy. After I sat in the taxi I saw them manually entering the rate. Hotel told me one approximate price, but it ended up way higher. They saw a tourist, they used opportunity.

Sweden, where the OP said this happened, has a deregulated taxi industry. Taxis are free to set the meter rate however they wish. They do need to inform the client about the rate, but tourists can't really judge whether the quoted price is fair or not.

"I declined, just because I want to support Uber."

Why? They are not providing anything real service in this case.

As with any gig work, the payout drops down to horrible levels once the company is established and has no real competitors. This may explain why some drivers now want to avoid Uber for longer rides.

Huh? Uber are providing an estimate that taxi drivers won’t. Kind of the whole point of the comment.

But one driver said he will match Ubers price? Isn't that a kind of estimate?

Just to confirm, that was an Uber driver, that I was able to get only because I used an Uber app.

Because if we will agree with drivers, in that case Uber is not going to have profit, and Uber will be gone from that city/country. And we will be back to the taxi world.

In addition to this, if there is any issue like accidents getting Uber support is way easy.

> They are not providing anything real service in this case.

They connected the driver to the passenger, and negotiated an acceptable rate between both. They build and maintain the infrastructure necessary to make this happen quickly and reliably at global scale.

If that’s not a valuable service, drivers and passengers wouldn’t rely on it. But they do.

It seems you want to use the service, and just don’t want to pay for it.

Because having dealt with taxi drivers around the world, some of them are complete assholes who specialise in taking advantage of people when they know the least (new arrivals in an unfamiliar country).

Taxi drivers and their schemes are half the reason people use Uber, it's certainly the reason I do.

Drivers have creative ways of getting around rules in most markets. In India when you get a ride assigned the driver will first call you and check where you are going, and cancel the ride (or ask for extra money) if the amount or destination is not to their liking.

This happens here in the US as well. Especially for food delivery apps, the driver shown on the app will rarely be the person who actually does the delivery. This is because people create accounts and sell them to others who don't have legal status, and take a cut of their earnings.

Never considered this before but I'd be curious if the delivery apps have data where they can tell which drivers are using this tactic.

That last part also happens for rides too. Has happened to me multiple times in Orlando to the point where I’ll just call a Mears taxi instead - ends up being cheaper anyways.

This used to be very common in the US especially around airports where drivers wait for up to an hour to get a fare and want to make sure it's worth the wait. It may still be happening, but I just go straight for the cab to avoid the hassle.

The US airport rideshare model (if you even want to call a largely emergent phenomenon that) must be one of the most wasteful things in transportation ever.

Why do I have to wait for, and find, my specific Uber/Lyft out of a sea of otherwise identical ones that are all in each other's way, all while idling and wasting tons of fuel? (I know that the legal answer is "taxi medallions"; that doesn't make it any less absurd.)

1. You pick the kind of car you want (sedan, SUV, luxury, with a child seat, pet friendly, EV).

2. The driver can choose the areas they want to drive in.

3. Cars can wait in an airport parking lot until they are needed and not crowd the terminal.

It is a perfectly efficient model.

> 1. You pick the kind of car you want (sedan, SUV, luxury, with a child seat, pet friendly, EV).

I'd be willing to pay extra to just get whatever car is right there. I really couldn't care less about most of these modes, and I doubt that the vast majority of other passengers do either (maybe with the exception of a child seat).

> It is a perfectly efficient model.

You've clearly never been to JFK then.

JFK is a mess because it cannot accommodate the amount of traffic it gets. And you want to add thousands of Ubers standing at the gate waiting for passengers?

> I'd be willing to pay extra to just get whatever car is right there

So then just go to the taxi stand? Why even call an Uber?

What would be so hard about allowing a new Uber/Lyft in for each leaving one, physically or logically?

Uber/Lyft could allocate the "new car in" slots using whatever mechanism they currently use to match riders to drivers.

Having to find "my" car is just completely backwards in the airport scenario, at least at times of high usage.

Because cars aren't allowed to idle at the terminal. They wait in a queue in the parking lot until they are matched, and then come pick you up. Yes this means you have to wait a couple minutes extra, but airports enforce this rule for a reason.

> airports enforce this rule for a reason.

What is that reason, and why are things handled so differently for taxis?

Have you tried writing to your local airport authority and asking them the reason? Or are you automatically assuming that there's a grand conspiracy at play against you?

In most cases it's a simple capacity problem. Taxis have to be hailed physically, and there are already reserved taxi stands at every airport. There's no reason for that to change.

I don't think this is a conspiracy at all, just a pretty standard case of an incumbent getting preferential treatment (why else do taxis get a reserved taxi stand, but Uber/Lyft don't?) and an "innovator" disrupting at any cost and externalizing the consequences (in this case congestion throughout the terminal and surrounding streets).

A more efficient stable state is clearly not being reached through market forces, but since there will never be agreement on whether that's due to too little (get rid of the medallions!) or too much market liberalization (ban the rideshares!!), and the only thing everybody can agree on is that a public transit solution is impossible, I don't see any way out.

What.

I've never heard anything this stupid.

I've only encountered the following two airport systems:

1) There's a queue of taxis and people coming out go to the first one.

2) There's a queue of people, and an airport person tells you when you can go to the next taxi.

Depending on whether there's too many people or too many taxis.

Uber/Lyft's system is that taxis wait in a (virtual) queue in an airport parking lot, and when you request one they come to the terminal to pick you up.

Yeah, and that's arguably absurd. It creates dozens of people and dozens of cars all in each other's way. It's complete and utter chaos I've not experienced in any other country.

No, that's not how it works. The ride share drivers wait in a parking lot near the airport. Then when you hail one using the app they come pick you up in a designated zone. The app notifies you when your car arrives and you can check the license plate. It works fine most of the time, there's very little chaos. Have you ever even been to a US airport?

> Have you ever even been to a US airport?

Yes, I travel to/from US airports all the time. This is based on my personal experiences there.

Admittedly, there are some where it does work a bit better (NYC does seem to be particularly bad, but fortunately at least JFK has the AirTrain; EWR seems to be giving up on theirs).

But all in all, the experience is notably worse than in most other countries I've been to.

Some states seem to not require front plates which makes it extra annoying. Especially if I'm bad at identifying vehicle models (I basically only use Uber/Lyft when I travel for work to get to my hotel in cities with shitty or nonexistent public transport...)

> I've never heard anything this stupid.

I may be misunderstanding your comment, but you're saying you've never heard of online rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft?

Maybe GP has just never taken one to/from the airport? It's really not that common to do that in many places outside of the US. In many European cities, public transit is often the fastest way to get to/from the city center from an airport.

Elsewhere, Uber is just not great compared to taxis, and supply can be minimal:

I've had to take an Uber recently for work [1] , and I effectively had a choice between one driver that would ask me to please cancel from my side because they didn't want to go to the airport, and another driver already at the airport (with Uber blatantly lying that they'd be here to pick me up in "10 minutes", when the ride takes 30 without traffic).

[1] Expensing a taxi invoice is more of a hassle. On top of that, often the card terminal mysteriously and completely unexpectedly breaks down at the end of the ride in taxis in some places, and expensing cash payments is even harder.

> In many European cities, public transit is often the fastest way to get to/from the city center from an airport.

Yeah, exactly.

When friends or family go to the airport, I drive them.

When I go to the airport, I take the metro. It's a 5 minute walk from home, and the metro stops inside the airport.

Yes, I've heard of them.

But they were banned in my country years ago.

Taxis and humans queue up against each other in the countries I've went to.

I think the answer is more that Uber has externalized the cost of all that waste.

Why do they care about increased traffic and increased pollution if they aren't the ones hiring extra staties to manage the chaos?

Given that Uber isn't charging (and by extension isn't earning anything) on the time drivers spend to get to the pick up point, I doubt that they don't have any economic interest in doing something better than the status quo.

I think this really is an artifact of the taxi medallion system which regulates private car transportation differently depending on the way you hail it, for largely historical reasons. (Taxis that you can just flag down used to be much more profitable, to the point where a license for that used to go for more than a million USD in NYC.)

Uber/Ola at Indian airports do not actually assign you specific driver/car. You are given a PIN & asked to go queue at the relevant counter (Premier, Electric, XL, Go etc). You just get into the car then, tell your PIN & the ride starts.

> the driver shown on the app will rarely be the person who actually does the delivery

Some will get around this with fake IDs, or at one point, simply setting their own photo on the driver profile page that doesn't match the drivers license photo.

https://www.wired.com/story/priscila-queen-of-the-rideshare-...

It's not Kenya, it's everywhere. Ubers in the US are increasingly doing a lot of the same things (canceling your booking if they don't like where you're going, e.g.) and becoming indistinguishable from the pre-Uber status quo.

From an economic perspective it's kind of fascinating that lying and cheating drivers appear to be the natural equilibrium state of the taxicab market; Uber temporarily disrupted this dynamic but could not actually eliminate it, and it is now reasserting itself after a period of turbulence.

> and becoming indistinguishable from the pre-Uber status quo

As long as you can (1) tap a button on your phone and have a taxi show up in front of you in minutes and (2) pay by credit card and not have the driver rip you off by taking a longer route, it will continue to be infinitely better than the pre-Uber status quo.

> not have the driver rip you off by taking a longer route

I've had that happen with Uber more than once.

The app now just seems to automatically "recalculate the fare" due to an "unexpectedly longer route or travel time", i.e. it's actively enabling this type of scam!

Except your (1) is already slipping away - many drivers are now canceling on you if they don't like your destination.

I think it is natural end of drive to bottom or extractive markets. Uber drops prices until drivers are forced to take steps to earn income. Or market is twisted by something absolutely moronic like overpriced transferable licenses...

Likely only real way to make market mostly workable is setting reasonable cap on rates and controlling amount of cheap to acquire licences, but disallow transfers.

It always amazed me how Uber was able to quickly force itself into the most criminal markets (which in poorer countries is typically anything that has to do with taxis). But in hindsight, after a quick surprise win worldwide, they were eventually forced out. In Russia, weirdly enough, not by criminals but by a quasi-state company, starting back in 2018. In parts of Mexico, by what seems like outright criminals and collusion. In Turkey, sometimes works, but often seems ignored. Wonder how they were able to launch in complicated markets to begin with.

How? Likely bribes. No way around it in parts of the world. Have to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

Including the US, but here bribes are legal, it's called lobbying!

actually not comparable in price and scale. lobbying is cheap and limited, while bribes often become buisness ending very fast .

> lobbying is cheap

I heard Google and Microsoft spent bilions on EU lobby.

The places that don't have bribery call it lobbying.

That way, the politicians can look down on other governments for the lack of sophistication in their corruption.

> The places that don't have bribery

This is an interesting sci-fi premise, but hard to imagine.

> places that don't have bribery call it lobbying

You're describing people without a civics education. Bribes (direct or promised after term), campaign contributions (direct and via PACs) and lobbying (direct and paid) are categorically distinct.

Reminder a certain political group are trying to make bribery legal in the U.S. by calling it a "tip."

> Reminder a certain political group are trying to make bribery legal in the U.S. by calling it a "tip"

Source? (My search keeps turning up Tip O'Neill.)

I suspect they are referring to the recent US Supreme Court decision.

Yes. Two issues, really. First, high wealth individuals could accept "tips" to get paid millions without any tax. And you could "tip" a Congressperson and it would not be called a bribe.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sen-ted-cruzs-no-ta...

https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2024/07/us-sup...

> not by criminals but by a quasi-state company

corporate would like you to find the difference between these two photos

In Hungary by the taxi lobby first and then they let them "back", but there is only a single company that serves taxis via Uber so it's only a front end.

Are fares pre-calculated or dynamic/metered?

I couldn't care less as what my ride is regulated or operated, but I do appreciate the fare being known upfront. (For what it's worth, Uber is quickly eroding this advantage themselves by automatically charging a surcharge in case a driver takes a more circuitous route, just like in good old taxi days.)

Had 3 Ubers in a row spoofing gps location trying to pickup a ride at Istanbul departures, but then sending increasingly cryptic, once you are here walk 500m here directions one by one.

1 even started the trip without me in the car and said it was an accident.

Uber support didn’t care about that or the GPS spoofing.

Uber engineering does, there is extensive work that goes into the app to ensure drivers aren't GPS spoofing or that an actual ride is occurring. I.E. Check the accelerometer or gyro. That said theres a natural tension between making the app accessible to drivers and locking it down to protect riders. I.E. Disabling the app if your phone is rooted/jailbroken. But again you are limited to privacy, the api's for the devices you have to support and managing how accessible the app is.

It wasn’t Uber but taxis. When I visited Istanbul a while ago, the taxi drivers were creative in how they scammed people. Some purposely took a longer route to the destination to charge more, while others altered the meter so it showed almost double the fare. I discovered this because the same trip cost half using another taxi. Others asked for an upfront price and ignored the meter.

I lived in Turkey for over 3 years. It is really sad how taxis were by far the worst part. When Uber came to Ankara, it was a massive improvement in my quality of life.

In Istanbul, there are a few things to watch out for but Uber is still a million times better than calling a random taxi. Part of it is because taxis in Istanbul are surprisingly cheap and it encourages bad behavior. During peak times in the most busy places, Uber drivers may cancel on you if the ride is short. Whatever happens, Uber support in Turkey has been very responsive to me. So I have to give them credit for that.

I was in Istanbul for less than a week and had multiple bizarre taxi experiences.

Lots of money (coming from VCs) and willingness to play as dirty as your competitors is usually a winning combo.

> It always amazed me how Uber was able to quickly force itself into the most criminal markets

We had a horrendous taxi market in Ukraine, before Uber. We knew Uber is coming for about a couple years prior to the first ride, so the market decided to prepare.

Cut to Uber opening in Kiev: they have managed not only to get the worst drivers (drug addicts, drunk people, outright fake accounts, etc), but they have pushed the bar far lower. There weren't a taxi service as bad as Uber ever before.

OTOH, one of the previously worst services decided to preemptively compete with Uber and became one of the best I have ever used. Perfect cars, excellent drivers, top-notch service and support, incredibly, unbelievably good.

So there's that.

I remember using Uber in Kenya. Half the time, I had to reject the ride because the license plate on the car did not match the app.

Out of safety reasons? In Europe I never even considered checking if the plates match, i also wouldn't care if they didn't

Plates not matching is a major red flag, no?

This makes no sense,why wouldn't Uber just increase rates and take a cut rather than let the drivers eat their lunch? What incentive do they have to charge less than the market will bear?

Giving in to collective action by the drivers, of which they are diametrically opposed. If they raise the rates, taking the cut or not, they are allowing the drivers to 'win' in their mind.

So, in this case, Uber receives little blowback and passes it directly on to the riders who are either unaware, uncaring and/or willing to deal w/the drivers negotiating on top of the advertised rates.

e: corrected spelling of blowback; whoops

Uber still benefits via a bigger cut from higher rates, so long as that's the market rate that people are willing to pay (if they start getting undercut by a competitor that's a different story). In my view, the fact that taxi drivers can charge extra and people are paying it shows that Uber was priced too low.

Whatever rate they ask the driver can undercut them. Driver gets a fraction of the ride. Even if they undercut uber the driver gets more take negotiating directly with the customer. I will do this sometimes when uber is surging if the driver is willing to take cash.

For this particular market, they are not charging less than the market will bear, they are charging all they can.

They have to keep taking an 'L' specifically because there is extreme efficiency in price information discoverability in a commodity market.

Explaining:

Some background info: - almost all drivers are signed up with all services [ ie i) Lyft, Uber - which are global & ii) Faras, Bolt which are international but Africa only I think ]

- riders have all apps and will price shop on every single app before booking a trip because it will be the same freaking vehicle and driver (ie literally the same service because of item above)

- ride prices are pretty expensive relative to local earnings: take for example, that first item (Minimum to and from JKIA, which is the main airport in Nairobi). It is 1000kshs which is about $8 - not a big amount in the west but is a bit of coin in Kenya - a day;. If I can get the same ride for $6, it is kind of a big deal because it means I can maybe also get a meal from the ride savings - estimates say apps takes 30% (20% commission and 10% booking fee) and this is off the top of the payment

So, the rides are a fungible commodity. It is the same ride, all you are choosing is whom to buy it from

Consider Bob looking for a ride to the airport: he looks at all 4 apps ( Uber, Lyft, Faras and Bolt), finds the cheapest one (Alice, on say the app HNewsRides) at Kshs 800 (~$6) and books that (since it is the same freaking car and driver as all drivers all use all the apps! Note that they can also sorta see - based on proximity and time to arrival for pickup - that the same ride with Alice would cost Kshs 900 on AppA, Kshs 1000 on AppB, Kshs 950 on AppD etc )

Even worse, after Bob has taken a couple of rides with Alice, and they know each other a little better, they will establish a relationship and exchange phone numbers so that Bob will just reach out to Alice directly and cut out the middle man ( apps ) because Alice will charge them the app amount less say 25% (because there is no cut for the app now). Bob gets a 10%-20% discount on the ride and Alice (the driver ) gets 20% more for the ride. This means that apps have to cut prices again to compete ad infinatum till every ride is free (or the apps are paying riders to get market share and then jack prices, which they have done )

So, the real problem is extreme information availability and a multitude of players. If there were just one or two apps, price management is easier but with 4+ players, price competition is the name of the game.

About the "it will be the same driver and vehicle" thing: this is a quirk of the Kenyan market. If an ride is showing as less than 5 mins away from you on all apps, it is likely to be a situation where it is just one specific car and driver across all apps. Nairobi has horrendous all day traffic. Really bad. Think your worst nightmare traffic and multiply by two. Two cars separated by as little as 1 mile could have as much as a 10 min difference in estimated arrival times because of traffic. So, if a vehicle says "5 mins away" in 4 different apps, you can relatively safely assume it is the same vehicle listed on across all apps.

The eventual outcome of such race down is the apps realize they are merely matchmakers and they charge a 100% commission, since the price quoted can only be trusted as accurate with regards to the cost of using the 'rideshare' app.

That is essentially what has already effectively happened.

Passengers are paying the drivers directly ( and the drivers then passing on the apps share on to them - the 30% in commission and booking fee ) because when the passengers pay outside the rideshare app, the app portion becomes payable to the app.

Passengers pay outside the app because mobile money is ubiquitous in Kenya (mobile phone to mobile phone micropayments called MPESA): it is used even more frequently than cash

Adding to this, it then makes sense why this isn't a thing in most developed countries as the burden of checking 4 apps seems to not be worth saving a few dollars for most people. In the US, for example, it seem like the two main competitors are Uber and Lyft, with Uber having 3x the sales as Lyft.[0] So it seems like most people will just check Uber and buy that no matter what.

[0] (Bloomberg) https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/rideshare-industry-over...

Eh not sure I agree. Lyft has no presence in Kenya and don't think anyone uses Faras. Bolt has had its fair share of issues that have made it a slinkily option as well. Uber's pretty much the only reasonable option which is why the drivers are revolting.

Uber's approach to business is to crush any competition with bottom of the barrel rates, funded by investor money or foreign profits. If they can't kill all of the competition, their approach puts them at a loss without a chance to make their money back later.

Higher rates make it easier for competition to set up alternatives and let the free market do its job.

The world doesn’t function the same as it does in an economics textbook.

Markets aren’t perfectly competitive, participants don’t have perfect information, etc.

In most international markets Uber is already the "premium" option. Local taxi apps easily beat them on price, and so they cannot afford to go higher.

While I think undercutting competition is true, I think there's another aspect - common with food delivery apps.

If Uber (or others) actually charged what it would really cost to perform the service, pay a fair wage, etc - the resulting price would be so high that the average user wouldn't accept it.

The only way they've been able to get any interest at all is by finding every possible way of keeping the price way lower than it should be. Mostly be underpaying drivers.

When I was in Kenya last year (around Nairobi & the coast), I was shocked with how cheap the Ubers were. I was wondering how they could even pay for gas with the rates being so low. This answers that question and it's not at all surprising to find Uber yet again corrupting the market and the drivers paying the price.

At that time everything was going through the app like normal, but I did find that most drivers would call you to confirm the pickup or destination spots to be sure. I don't recall many if any cancellations.

Kilimani to jkir is about 20 km and a bit over half hour ride. Their published rate is about 16 bucks.

A longer 52km ride is about 38 bucks.

It’s cheap by western. Not sure how it fares against other comparable countries.

I just did a few calcs for here in South Africa, and the prices you mentioned are about 2.1x as much than what it costs to get an UberX/Go trip here. Or the same price as what I'd pay for a "luxury" Uber Black ride.

This is just taxis doing what taxis always eventually do. This whole gimmick of "we can't afford to live at these rates" is just whining because they don't like their earnings at the end of the day. I'm all for a fair price that takes into account all the costs involved and a fair margin ontop so it's a livable and respectful wage. But what Taxis eventually do is not it, they want a certain lifestyle and salary that they've been used to before ride-shares came about, and they'll eventually get violent (like they did here in SA) till they get it. Fun story, I was in an Uber here once and got chased-down by an angry taxi driver when they saw me being picked up by an Uber driver from a "protected" tourist spot.

at a famous JHB spot - it's a no go area for Ubers. so you've to get a taxi and get dropped off at some gas station. then get an uber from there, otherwise taxi fees will be massive.

Visited CapeTown and Egypt. It's actually a lot cheaper in Kenya, especially for short rides.

I don't understand. What's to stop an uber customer from just flat out refusing and reporting the driver (and eventually getting them kicked off the platform)?

If I am quoted a rate, I expect to pay that rate.

Uber doesn't take much action on reported drivers because they run out of drivers quickly in certain geographies - specifically the drivers don't feel like they are compensated enough for the ride.

Part of the trick is that you can't rate a driver if you don't actually start the ride, and the driver controls when the ride starts. Sometimes the driver will just get a fare from another service and wait for you to cancel the ride, and then they get a cancellation fee unless you complain to Uber, which they make difficult to do. The trick I use in this situation is just to switch to Lyft and make the driver cancel so I don't have to deal with Uber customer service.

They can do it, but what's the guarantee that the next one won't behave the same way? Ultimately people have places to be, and if the quickest option involves paying slightly more money, so be it.

Because they get taken down an alley and get the shit kicked out of them.

"A-- resorted to extreme violence in the face of resistance to corruption. Will not use again"

So they basically reinvented taxi again, with the added captive audience factor coming from abusing the platform.

Always carry an object capable of smashing out a window when you ride in a 3rd world taxi

Most cars come with window smashing equipment included! The headrest and seat belt buckle can both be used to break a window: https://carroar.com/how-to-break-a-car-window/

On the off chance car culture in Kenya is anything like in India (which I would not assume by default), at least a decent few will have headrests covered by a seat cover and rear seat belts stuck behind the seat or otherwise unavailable.

How does this help when traveling at speed? I’m trying to come to terms with the threat (kidnapped?) and response (break a window and then what)?

I admit my taxi experience is limited to Mexico, Paraguay, Iraq, Syria, and the Philippines. But in each one of those traffic control was so broken you couldn't have gone more than 2 blocks off course without the chaos forcing a stop or slowdown.

No one I know across many, many 3rd world countries has ever done this or recommended it. I suggest learning how to vet the driver before getting into the vehicle. For example, does the driver and car's plates and description match what's in the app?

Why? They don't have child locks on the doors. You're gonna be stuck trying to explain to somebody why you think it's OK to carry around a life hammer when you inevitably have to go through a metal detector. Plus cars in developing countries aren't built as heavily as ones in the west - you could probably just kick the window out if you need to. Just don't wear flip flops everywhere.

You're probably going to be some level of taller/wider/stronger than the driver too if you're a western tourist in a developing country. I've ridden in thousands of developing country cabs. Most drivers are normal people just trying to get by and won't try anything.

I was trapped by an armed man once when I was a kid and ever since then I have always had a backup plan to escape. Most taxi drivers are honest good people, some aren't. The only people that have jammed me up were US CBP, in my experience foreign customs knows their country is fucked and will let most non-gun metal objects slide. It's mostly nanny states that jam you up for a hammer.

Don't know about developing countries but in the US (Boston) I have encountered cabs with the rear door lock mechanism broken so that we couldn't get out until the driver unlocked the doors. Luckily I wasn't by myself but it was creepy.

gotta include the US in this as well lmao

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