Your Uber Driver Can Secretly Report You on the App for Weed

Multiple drivers told me years ago that they had riders get into the car with a lit joint and demanded to be allowed to smoke it. They said they&#x27;d give the driver a bad rating otherwise. At the time (in my city), this often meant the driver would have such a low rating that they&#x27;d rarely get any fares.<p>I personally dislike it when cars smell like (any kind of) smoke because I smell like it, so I like this feature of the app.

People are going to be smoking weed, doing drugs, having sex, generally making a mess when autonomous taxis roll out. They will be disgusting.<p>Once you remove the &quot;let&#x27;s respect the vehicle because it&#x27;s owned by an actual human being sitting in front of me&quot; you feel a lot less bad about being disrespectful when using a product owned by some corporate entity.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. Look at it from the driver’s perspective: if you’re pulled over and the car reeks of weed or alcohol your day just got a lot worse. Doubly so if you’re a minority and you get pulled over by someone on a power trip. What is the driver supposed to do, strip the customer looking for illegal substances? This gives an easy way to decline the ride or disincentive the passenger without having to make a long explanation.

I feel like we&#x27;re burying the lead:<p>“another claim of this nature could result in permanent account deactivation.”<p>Uber wants to replace private and public transit, and then wants to be able to permanently &quot;deactivate&quot; your ability to transit.

In other news today, some Uber drivers pee into bottles while driving: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;cars&#x2F;article&#x2F;Uber-driver-pees-in-bottle-passenger-urine-urinate-13089274.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;cars&#x2F;article&#x2F;Uber-driver-pees-in-bott...</a>

Meanwhile Lyft continues to be a pretty cool company to do business with.

I don&#x27;t really care. It seems like a reasonable response. But why single out marijuana? There is a rating system for customers, and this seems like it should fall under that.

I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;m following this. The smell can&#x27;t be that powerful as to stay in the car. It&#x27;s not like the customer lights up joints inside the uber

Seems like there may be a market for a new tier of uber. Maybe one were the car standards and passenger expectations aren&#x27;t as high.

I drove for Uber for a little while, and I kicked people out of the car for smoking weed, just like I kicked people out of the car for smoking cigarettes.<p>1. My car is no-smoking. Ask before you light up. This is my personal property, not your living room.<p>2. Smoking weed is legal where I was driving, but only in your private home. Not in a hotel. Not on the street. And certainly not in a motor vehicle. I&#x27;m not going to lose my license because you can&#x27;t wait 18 minutes to get high. (Which is pretty much the definition of an addict.)<p>Where I drove, Uber would very quickly take $150 out of your credit card and give it to the driver if you vomit in the car, as a cleaning fee. I would not be surprised if the same applied to smoking drugs.<p>(I don&#x27;t know if any of this was covered in TFA because I&#x27;m not going to visit what appears to be a stoner website on a work connection.)

Now law enforcement would just mine that data.