This is probably a bad idea; Uber drivers will primarily use this to screen which calls they pick up. Even if they only revealed the destination after the driver accepted, if the fare was unfavorable enough, the driver might still accept the ding for canceling.<p>There may also be liability reasons for not directly handling nav in the driver app, even if that just meant delegating to some iOS framework:<p>* It would give customers a toehold to litigate the routes Uber selected, rather than leaving them out of that process entirely<p>* It would require drivers to interact with iPhones while driving in order to handle the routing, which might be considered less safe than dash-mounted nav devices.
Of course, the negative effect is that if a driver sees the destination address before picking you up, they'll avoid taking the call if it is to a location they'd rather not go. (e.g., city -> airport, forced to use heavily congested roads, etc.)<p>That is one of the reasons taxis in NYC are not allowed to ask where you are going prior to letting you in the car. They can be fined a few hundred for that and a few violations will get their license revoked.<p>Also, what if there is more than one destination?<p>One way to avoid this -- perhaps the Uber app could let you push a contact's address to the Uber driver's phone/GPS nav after you are in the car as the "next immediate destination" to avoid having to say the address and have the driver key it in.
My guess is that giving drivers the destination info before you are actually in the car would increase drivers canceling pickups when they see the destination is somewhere they don't want to go, or not taking a pickup if they didn't want to haul all the way out to an airport, etc.
On a recent Uber ride, I had hoped that this would work since the rider app looks like it supports it. (If you click the '+' sign after choosing a pickup location, it lets you choose the dropoff location.) However, I was disappointed in that the driver still asked where I was going. He recommended to me that I try out Sidecar instead, which asks you where you are going as its first question when you schedule a ride.<p>The second suggestion in the post was about indicating what kind of car to expect. Lyft does a good job with this in the texts they send (it says your driver name and the color/make of the car.)
In contrast to other comments here, there's a lot they could do to mitigate concerns -- such as simply not showing it until the person was in the car.<p>Of course, it's condescending to think Max Horstmann has though more about this than Uber has.<p>That being said, it will show the driver the destination address if you use the Fare Calculator before requesting the ride. I'm not 100% sure on the details, though.
Lyft has this feature (not sure if they added it in the latest update) but the last time I rode the driver was unfamiliar with this feature and asked me "where to", to which I said I added the destination and as soon as the driver marked the ride as "picked up", the destination popped up in the maps. The driver was surprised and didn't know this feature existed.<p>Out of curiosity, does the Lyft driver app have maps/nav in-built while Uber does not ?
FYI: If you request a fare quote before your request, the driver will see your destination once they have accepted the fare (otherwise it says "Drop off as directed").
There's a cache here: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic--UF6sJ:maxhorstmann.net/blog/2014/04/13/dear-uber-youre-great-but-please-add-this-feature/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic--...</a><p>I would much rather be able to know what colour the car is that's turning up with UberX, makes it easier to spot the car as it arrives.
Google Cache: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic--UF6sJ:maxhorstmann.net/blog/2014/04/13/dear-uber-youre-great-but-please-add-this-feature/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic--...</a><p>TL;DR: "When ordering an Uber ride, I (obviously) have to enter my pickup location. Can I please also enter the intended dropoff location?"
You can already enter a drop-off location. It might be that Uber needs to make this feature more pronounced in the UI.<p>On the confirmation screen, you can tap a little plus button next to the pickup address to enter your drop-off location. It's come in handy for me a few times.
You can already do this. If you use the estimate fare functionality, I've had drivers already know where I'm going. It doesn't seem like everyone is accustomed to this, though, since I've mentioned it and some drivers have no idea what I'm talking about.
Lyft just added this to their latest public build but they've been beta testing this for a year. It doesn't do the navigation in app, it shunts it off to your preferred navigation provider.