Horrible tragedy this weekend.Samantha Josephson got into the wrong car on a rainy night.
How does someone know a car is their Uber ride? Cabs are very clearly marked
The Uber app tells you the make and color of the car, and gives you a license plate number. I always confirm the last three digits. Sometimes you even get a photo of the driver.
That would confirm the ride. Thank you Procrustus
…this happened to me last year: I was stopped at the traffic lights at the bottom of a parking garage when a woman opened up my car door and sat down in the front seat. She then stared at me oddly and said “are you my Uber?”
“Nope.” I said. Then without a word of apology she hopped out of my car and walked away. As I exited the parking garage I saw a car, nearly identical to mine (but not quite the same) waiting outside the building, and I saw that the woman was heading in that direction.
So while the details may well be in the app, I suspect many people will not pay close attention to those details.
My Uber drivers often greet me by name and destination: “Tom, going to Farmingdale?”
Procrustus is also correct about the make, model, and plate of the car, plus name and photo of the driver.
Not specifically for the right car, but for uber drivers in general: Uber drivers also have a logo sticker on the windshield. If you look up the app’s icon, you’ll notice cars with that icon on the windshield. That’s the equivalent of cabs being clearly marked - you know someone is an Uber driver by that sticker. It’s not a bright yellow car, but those who use the app know it.
I don’t use Uber, but Lyft works the same way. Make, model and license plate.
BTW the blue Super Shuttle vans you get at the airport give you the number of the van, which is big help when there is a flock of them.
Lyft cars also have a lit-up doodad with the Lyft logo.
Of course, people who call Uber or Lyft may be drunk/inebriated, or have poor vision, or the pick up area may be poorly lit, which may make identifying a vehicle problematic. Which in no ways excuses someone murdering a passenger that mistook them for a ride service, of course.
In addition, the app shows you the location of your ride on a map and gives you its approximate time to arrival. Once the car is at your location, it will say “arrived.” I can often recognize my ride a block away. So if a car stops but the app says your driver is five minutes away you would know that’s not it. And as Ace309 says, the driver will have your name and destination before he arrives.
I rely on Uber here in Panama in part due to safety concerns. There have been lots of incidents, including people I know personally, having been robbed by cabbies driving a yellow cab. (There are lots of other issues with yellow cabs here as well, such as the driver not wanting to take you where you want to go, charging you a higher fare, not having change, having to stop for gas, not having his highway toll pass card paid up, taking on additional passengers, having dirty cabs with no AC, playing loud obnoxious music, etc., so that I will wait 10 minutes for a Uber rather than hail a yellow cab in front of me.)
The incident in the OP is tragic but there are multiple ways to confirm the identity of your ride.
?!? 
It’s damn nearly the only thing I use my iPad for, and I don’t use Uber all that often (3-4 times/year). But once you’ve “hailed” a ride, it shows you exactly where your ride is; you can track it turn for turn and watch as it comes into sight just as the map shows it approaching you.
I suppose it could be less idiot-proof in a crowded location with lots and lots of vehicles; I usually have it come get me at our suburban home. Even so, as others have pointed out, the drivers usually want to make sure they aren’t letting an inappropriate person into their vehicle and they confirm my name.
I don’t know the details of this yet, but the young lady in question was leaving a bar late at night. IF she was intoxicated, all bets are off, so far as her keeping the presence of mind to make sure that a particular vehicle was the correct one. Unfortunately, alcohol is a great equalizer when it comes to causing people to make bad decisions.
So her murder and the events leading up to it were her own damn fault?
I think an episode of Criminal Minds had a car-for-hire driver who was canceling the called for ride and picking people up to do icky things to the callers.
You get the driver’s name on the app. Ask the driver of the car their name if you’re not sure.
[Moderating]
No one has said anything like that. Let’s not hijack this discussion.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Nobody’s saying that. “She made a mistake, and what happened to her would not have happened if she had not made that mistake” is not the same thing as “What happened was her fault.”
The takeaway is that this incident shouldn’t scare anyone away from using Uber; it should just encourage them to make sure the car they get into is really their driver’s.
ISTR that it tells you and the driver each other’s names as well.
Uber certainly does (at least, first names). I’ve not used Lyft, so I can’t comment on whether it does.
The only time I’ve ever had an issue with IDing my Uber driver was when I had one who showed up in a different car, with a different license plate, than what the app told me to expect. She told me that her car was in the shop, and she was driving a rental in the meantime.
Video of her getting into the car at bottom of page: Samantha Josephson: Cause of death of USC student revealed
I notice the car doesn’t have a front license plate (SC doesn’t require front plates). I’d imagine this tends to encourage a lot of Uber/Lyft riders in rear-plate-only states to not check and just assume a car that pulls up next to them that resembles what’s on their app is their ride.
Jeff Rosen did a report for The Today Show about how to avoid fake drivers for UBER.
It’s not quite the equivalent of cabs being clearly marked. Anybody can slap an Uber logo on their windshield and take it down just as easily. It’s pretty hard to pretend you’re a taxi.
How about how to avoid the real ones that are bad people?