I’m an Uber driver, and I’m occasionally called to locations to pick people up where there’s no good place to wait.
The other day I’m sent to a location on a fairly busy street with no driveways or alleys to pull in to, but there is a marked bike path along the curb that will let the other vehicles get past me while I wait for the passenger. So I pull up to the curb, blocking the bike lane, put on my flashers and stop to wait.
A minute or so later a biker stops next to m window and starts screaming at me to get out of the bike lane, it wasn’t for my use. Well, no shit, Sherlock.
So there’s me, the biker and there’s a third choice – the passenger. Most passengers apparently give no thought at all to how difficult it could be to pick them up safely at the location they want, and even worse, they are not waiting to be picked up. Drivers like me have to wait, often several minutes, for them to stroll out. I’d say a solid 75% or more riders are not there when I arrive.
So, who’s the dick – me, the shrill biker, or the lazy-ass passenger?
FYI, Uber tells me that I am to wait a minimum of 5 minutes for a passenger, and after that I can cancel the ride and note that the passenger was a no-show.
There’s an “all of the above” option, right? I’m not sure anyone is 100% in the clear here. Your desire to earn money doesn’t mean you get to break laws. The biker’s desire to see the law followed doesn’t mean he gets to yell at people. And your client should have mentioned a pickup location where you could safely wait, or should have been there on the dot.
You’re the dick. A bike lane is a traffic lane just as much as the car lane is. You need to find a place to wait that is not blocking any traffic lanes.
Bikers can get ticketed for leaving the bike lane, not to mention that it’s dangerous.
I honestly don’t think there was a right answer here. Ideally the person who called you should have been waiting for you to briefly stop, but that requires putting a lot of forethought into a fairly mundane interaction.
I was going to suggest that you circle the block until the passenger shows up, but he may not have poked his nose out of the building until he saw a car waiting for him.
The solution; stop driving for Uber because you’re only making $1.60 an hour.
You were something of a dick, but Uber and the fare were more dickish for putting you in this position in the first place. Plus all urban bike riders are dicks anyway, as are all car for hire drivers, and pretty much almost all drivers of any kind, along with all the people who live in cities and claim to prefer it over the real world, or are simply college students. As with most societal problems there are plenty of dicks to blame.
The biker, but only if the OP had explained his untenable position. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all to just circumvent the cab. Life throws roadblocks at us all the time, literally and figuratively. The biker could have been the bigger man, and figured out a way around the obstruction, without becoming a jerk.
If you’re there attentively awaiting a customer, and know you’re blocking a bike path, how do you NOT see the bicyclist approaching?
If you saw him, why not wave that you’re moving and move slightly forward or back, to allow him to go by? But he should not have screamed at you regardless.
Tell us where would you have parked if a park bench had been located where you put your car?
One has to assume elsewhere. Can the best uber driver not text, ‘Nowhere to wait, circling the block, please be on the curb!’
All three are dicks. That happens sometimes. The unfortunate thing is that there’s no way for the three to meet and explain their predicaments to each other, which would diffuse the situation.
Yeah, the biker, for getting all bent out of shape over something so trivial. Bikers are just another of the new caste system, in which people are identifiable as a protected class, and hasten to play the card whenever they can. The biker probably lay awake that night, gnashing his teeth and rehearsing a better insult for the next time it happens.
I’d vote for all of the above, except I’d add “the city” into the mix, for implementing their bike lanes in such a slipshod way that you can’t drive up to a building and pick someone up for fear of clogging the bike lanes, or getting shrieked at by a butt-hurt cyclist.
In most places, a bike lane is something that a city carved out of existing roads in a haphazard way, without much consideration for all the usual stuff that cars do, like pulling in front of buildings to unload/pick up/whatever. I mean, parking your car there would have been out of bounds, but merely pulling up to wait isn’t such a big deal. What are small-scale delivery drivers like pizza delivery men supposed to do when there are bike lanes around?
You should have just circled the block until the passenger showed up, and the passenger should have been present when you showed up so you wouldn’t have to.
Beer and a .357 magnum. Solves and creates all life’s problems.
I think that the OP, and the person that ordered the pick-up, are the biguss dicuus.
As the provider of a service to a location, you should have an idea of where a good pick up point would be. As the client, they should know a good place for a pick up.
The bike rider was exercising their right to the bike lane. But no doubt there are plenty of bike riders that don’t feel the law applies to them. Or just behave foolishly.
