Uber pays millions resolving DOJ lawsuit for overcharging disabled people

I was recently in a wheelchair for a few weeks. Uber's ADA issues go beyond the scope of this lawsuit. Uber would consistently lie about the availability of a WAV vehicle, showing one as being nearby with low wait. Then when I would order it, either nothing was available or the wait time was completely insane. I never successfully hailed one.

Not sure how I feel about this. I see a similar issue in what I consider mistreatment of delivery workers. There have been delivery services and transport services for disabled&#x2F;elderly for a while now. People have been replacing them with gig workers and I&#x27;m not exactly sure who to blame or feel sorry for.<p>A post a while ago on reddit was someone who was complaining about a doordasher who didn&#x27;t want to wait and bring like multiple bags of cat litter like up 3 flights of stairs. The amount of inconsiderate abuse people have towards them (making them wait, navigate buildings) is a poor allocation of resources.

I&#x27;m glad for this finding, I suppose, but the world discriminates against disabled people in many more ways than this without any obvious recourse. As just a personal example, I&#x27;m over 6 ft with 10 screws in my spine and <i>really</i> can&#x27;t ride in the back seat of a standard sedan for more than a few minutes without being in quite a bit of pain. Ever since Uber started the &quot;no passengers in the front seat&quot; policy thanks to Covid, that means I can only take Uber XL, which costs more no matter what. It&#x27;s even worse for air travel, since I can only travel 1st class for anything more than a local flight. Airlines are only annoying most people when they squeeze us for space to the bare minimum of an average-sized, completely healthy person, but for others, they&#x27;ve giving us spasms and leaving us hobbled for hours after the flight.

I&#x27;m glad they got a fine, but I&#x27;m concerned that a) they&#x27;ll go right back to discriminating when the 2-year period mentioned is up, and b) I&#x27;m not sure requiring the user to get a waiver is the right approach. It&#x27;s more PII that Uber now stores and can be used to discriminate in other ways that might not be detectable from the outside.

I occasionally lose my eyesight due to a neurological condition. Getting either an Uber or a Lyft while visually disabled is a bit of a crap-shoot. Half the drivers I&#x27;ve summoned would just give up when I asked them to honk their horn or shout so I could hear where they were parked.<p>&quot;Millions&quot; are just a minor inconvenience for either company. They&#x27;ll factor it into their cost of doing business and get the next round of investors to fund it. Sadly, this kind of thing is going to go on for a while.

I stopped using Uber because their drivers kept ditching my pregnant friends. The second they see them, they cancel and bail. Lyft was far more supportive.

Why is this company allowed to exist? I feel like things like this are an instant like [X] where the company should just be actually taken down entirely and the owners thrown in prison.<p>Same with extremely scammy health insurance companies like United Healthcare.<p>I legitimately do not understand why they are allowed to exist with blatant criminal behavior.

Between this and Coinbase, the DOJ is firing on all pistons.

I&#x27;ve stayed away from Uber ever since their first scandal, and it keeps getting &quot;better&quot;. How fucked up can it get? They already killed someone with their shitty &quot;self-driving&quot; car... now this.

Anyone read what happened to that self driver who killed that pedesterian ... Uber threw them under the bus.<p>Even after Travis they continue to be an Uber disgusting company.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;uber-self-driving-car-fatal-crash&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;uber-self-driving-car-fatal-cras...</a>