This Week In Rideshare: Layoffs, Safety and NYC.

10,000 job cuts, DoorDash adds new features and NYC drivers get paid. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

MONDAY 11/14/22

Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 employees. New York Times reported:

The cuts will focus on Amazon’s devices organization, including the voice assistant Alexa, as well as at its retail division and in human resources, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The number of layoffs remains fluid and is likely to roll out team by team rather than all at once as each business finishes plans, one person said. But if it stays around 10,000, it would represent roughly 3 percent of Amazon’s corporate employees and less than 1 percent of its global work force of more than 1.5 million, which is primarily composed of hourly workers.

TUESDAY 11/15/22

DoorDash released five new safety features for drivers. They include:

SafeDash Check-In. If we detect that a dash is taking longer than expected, we’ll automatically check in to see if the Dasher is okay.

Real-Time Safety Alerts. In the event of an emergency, we can quickly alert Dashers, customers and merchants about the incident and suspend operations near the impacted area.

SafeChat. If our technology detects inappropriate or offensive language in a chat on our app, the person who sent the message will receive a warning reminding them of the potential consequences.

Safety Reporting. If a customer makes a Dasher feel unsafe, they can immediately report it via in-app chat or call for investigation

Porch Lights Reminders. We will send a notification to customers asking them to turn their porch or house lights on as the Dasher is approaching.

WEDNESDAY 11/16/22

NYC drivers are getting a pay increase. TechCrunch reported:

The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) voted to increase the per-minute rates of ride-hail drivers by 7.42% and per-mile rates by 23.93%. Yellow and green cab rates will also increase by 23% by the end of this year.

Per the new rates, a sample trip of 30 minutes that goes 7.5 miles will require a minimum driver pay of $27.15, which is up $4 from original rates and more than $2.50 from the current rates, according to the TLC. The commission noted that this is still a minimum and companies can pay drivers higher than that amount. Companies will continue to choose how much to charge passengers.

THURSDAY 11/17/22

Lyft takes a pivot to be for car ownership. Wired reported:

Zimmer predicted then that robotaxis would account for the majority of Lyft rides in the middle of the next decade (that’s two years from today). He reckoned that between conventional Lyft rides and autonomous ones, private car ownership would “all but end” in major US cities by 2025.

Now Lyft has flipped from aiming to kill off personal cars to getting into the business of helping owners maintain them.

The rollout of car services, in partnership with SpotHero for parking, roadside assistance provider Agero, and Goodyear service centers, is part of a revamp of its Lyft Pink subscription program. For $9.99 a month it gives users discounts on rides, priority pickups, a handful of free bike and scooter trips, and now four free roadside services per year and a 15 percent break on car maintenance services.

FRIDAY 11/18/22

Uber appears to be hiding payments...again. Mission Local reported:

Uber drivers used to receive a breakdown on their app after each ride. It would show how much the passenger paid, how much Uber took, additional costs incurred, and how much the driver would ultimately receive.

Starting late this summer, however, the customer payments information disappeared, leaving drivers with no easy way to check their payment against Uber’s stake.

Uber has not responded to a request for comment on the change. Mission Local’s small experiment, however, illustrates one of the possible reasons for the abrupt change: Money.

Mission Local booked five Uber rides in San Francisco recently, and asked drivers to share the amount of money they received from each ride. With the help of the drivers, we came up with a crude average of their share: 49.5 percent. Essentially, drivers are receiving less than half the money customers pay. One of the drivers spent almost 25 minutes on the order but only made $6.67.

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, gig workers, delivery and e-scooter accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.