The Risks of Ride-Sharing

Transport network corporations, otherwise known as ride-sharing companies, have been steadily increasing in popularity over the past decade. These app-based companies offer convenient forms of transportation at a moment’s notice and they have spread out to even the most remote parts of the country. But as the prevalence of these ride-sharing services increases, so do the dangers associated with them. 

Our Bronx car service, a veteran concierge car service, has therefore taken it upon itself to do some digging into the workings of ride-sharing services and highlight the risks associated with this mode of transportation for your own awareness and safety.

This is what we uncovered:

Ridesharing companies experience problems when it comes to vetting their drivers in the United States. This is actually ironical because the United States has some of the most accessible criminal records in the world, yet ride-sharing companies are unable to unequivocally guarantee the quality of their drivers and, consequently, the safety of their passengers.

Now, if these ride-sharing companies are unable to conclusively guarantee that they have good, safe drivers in the United States, how much worse could it be in countries where public records are, essentially, a myth? What this tells us is that ride-sharing services cannot explicitly vouch for their drivers and neither can they guarantee your safety or that of their employees, making it quite a huge risk every time you hail a ride-sharing service.

With a business model that centers around providing on-demand transportation wherever you may be, ride-sharing services have to hire a large number of drivers who cannot all be professionally trained chauffeurs. Ride-sharing services are also geared at providing the lowest prices possible while still maintaining high efficiency, which is good, but this also means that they have to compromise on driver quality. After all, most ride-sharing drivers make it a personal career, so there is really no need for the companies to insist on professional chauffeurs.

Engineers have a phrase that is the perfect analogy for this scenario; you can either have something done cheaply, quickly, or done well, but you can never have all three. In this case, ride-sharing services do things quickly and cheaply, but they certainly have to compromise on a number of aspects such as driver quality.

Ride sharing companies have admitted that they don’t definitively know who their drivers are. Now, every time there has been a major incident involving a ride-sharing service, the companies’ public relations teams always give a vague statement, something to the effect of, ‘we will review the driver screening process’ and, even where they have made efforts to enhance passenger safety, their efforts have always been reactive rather than proactive, leading us to question what these companies’ main agenda is. Is it to turn a profit, or deliver real value to their clientele? Well, evidence, as it stands, points to the former.

Islip Limo specializes in delivering the best ground transportation solutions. When you need the most reliable limo service Long Island has to offer, you can always count on us. Whether you need a luxury sedan or an extra-stretch limo, we are here to tailor our services according to your unique needs.