[binand]

I often take 6-7 AM flights out of Bangalore, which means I go to the airport around 4 AM from my home near Marathahalli. This situation is routine to me, and it is usually cab-provider agnostic (though I primarily use Meru & Uber). So much so that there is a regular tea stall under the KR Puram hanging bridge that I force the driver to stop at and have tea at my expense if I suspect him to be not 100% focused.

And it is because of this reason I started driving my own car to the airport and using the long-term parking. But then the return is generally at times when traffic has not subsided; so off late I tend not to do that.

[VKumar]

Here I will put the blame on the aggregators like Uber, Ola etc and the govt. why?

1) Uber / Ola can not track exactly if a driver has taken rest or driven for another aggregator, agree. But they can easily track if a single person is driving for multiple aggregators. They can ban this practice, can't they?

2) Although I seldom take this service, but at times I get to see some other person inside the cab and the photo of someone else on my ola app. Simple, because the same cab has multiple drivers and the car is on the roads 24X7; this practice is any ways better to have two guys and each of them driving for 12 hours.

3) When Govt. loves regulating nearly everything that comes their way, why not this? Simply put a ceiling on for how much time the cab can be there on the road - no matter if it is ola or uber or meru or whatever?

I have never faced this kind of situation ever where I had to face a sleepy driver except once when my own chauffeur was new to the job and he was a bit hesitant in telling me that he hasn't slept for whole night because of some family issues. Right before the drive I realized that, sternly told him to go stay back home and take 3-4 hours of sleep and later join me for another drive.

These cabbies don't realize the fact that they will hardly save 300-400 bucks be depriving themselves of the sleep for 2-3 hours but if they get into an accident then the losses can be anything from a few thousand bucks to unimaginable. Probably penny wise and pound foolish!

[i74js]

Uber, even if make provisions of stop assigning customers to a particular driver after a fixed number of hours is not going to help. Most of the cabbies are registered with both Ola & Uber and thus any such move from cab aggregater company will make the driver-partner log into other network (from Ola to Uber or vice versa).

Some other tool may be required, which may included real time analysis of driving pattern, though even that would not be of much help because the analysis will happen when the customer is on-board.

[A M]

Been there done that while on a Ladakh trip. The driver was very sleepy so drove from Lamayuru till Kargil war memorial while the driver slept peacefully in the last row of the Innova. I was initially hesitant as none of us had a commercial license but took over since there was no other option. And the fact that the stretch has zero policing and helpful and understanding army men and local people, made our decision easy.

I agree that the drivers need to be well rested to ensure theirs' and fellow road user's safety. But you never know under what circumstances their families are and how much those 3-400 bucks mean to them.

I happened to hop on to an Uber in Delhi. My payment method was cash. The driver was so happy that I would be paying him cash since he needed to pay his daughter's school fees and was short on cash. He said he had been getting fares paying through Paytm since morning and the money will be realized to his account by the end of the week.

[autobahnjpr]

I feel this is quite common. I once took a cab (official company cab) from bangalore to mysore late in the night and half of the way i had to drive because the driver was sleepy and it was guaranteed that he will hit if he continued driving.
I am not sure but i have observed two consistent pattern in the driving profession.

1) drunken driving - Whether it is airline pilots (glorified drivers), cab drivers or truck drivers, drunken driving is common. even lot of youngsters and common people do it. why they do it, i have never been able to figure out !
2) sleeping on the job - Sleeping while driving is also quite common (even many airline pilots doze off, leaving it to the other to take over). It is not that drivers are too overworked and have to do lot of physical work. It is sheer indiscipline on their part. No one forces them to take the next assignment. they can very well rest for a couple of hours and then again join the queue for rides.

[ssingri]

Originally Posted by i74js

Uber, even if make provisions of stop assigning customers to a particular driver after a fixed number of hours is not going to help. Most of the cabbies are registered with both Ola & Uber and thus any such move from cab aggregater company will make the driver-partner log into other network (from Ola to Uber or vice versa).

It will help in another way. Your business model must be based on the fact that if a person drives for 8 hours in a day he should earn enough revenue to pay for the car, fuel, and for his effort. This is missing in the app based cab model, and they will not comment on the number of working hours and safety, they will claim that it is just a business platform where the drivers are entrepreneurs who use their platform.
As the cab drivers are squeezed further somebody will ask this question one day, hopefully it will be the government. It is very easy to figure out how much a driver makes if he drives for 10 hours as all data is digital and available.

[libranof1987]

Incidents such as these have led me to appreciate (disregarding the inconvenience) my organization's policy of not allowing inter-city road journeys to start between 9pm-6am.

Invariably, those returning from an international trip land late in the night or early morning. It gets tricky in cases such as mine, where I stay in Pune and fly in/out of Mumbai. If the flight lands after 9pm, they ask us to stay in Mumbai for the night and then start for Pune at 6am the next day.

[binand]

Originally Posted by VKumar

1) Uber / Ola can not track exactly if a driver has taken rest or driven for another aggregator, agree. But they can easily track if a single person is driving for multiple aggregators. They can ban this practice, can't they?

Don't think so. Uber's business model is based on drivers signing on during peak hours and signing off during slack hours. If they put in such an exclusivity clause in their contract with the drivers then this model will fail, because then the driver will not be able to use the Uber slack time to drive elsewhere (to augment their income).

[Venkat_Figo]

Originally Posted by freedom

Taxi/Cab needs a "transporters license" LMV license. You can't drive a yellow board LMV with the standard license.

I have a question, Zoom car rentals are yellow plates I believe, would my standard license still be valid while driving one?

[knaveen]

I had a similar experience with Ola. Was returning from Bangalore to Chennai along with a colleague . Train reached Central station by 4:40AM. I live in the south side (Guduvanchery), which is a good 1 hr drive from the central station. Booked an Ola and got an Indica. Just as we crossed like 3 kms, noticed driver had a near miss with another taxi from opposite lane. We thought it was a genuine mistake, then later realized the car was swerving in an out of lanes. Asked the driver to stop for team, to which he replied he does not drink tea/coffee. Finally we found a aavin milk booth and asked him to stop. He had a badham milk! and then i asked him if i can drive from here. He happily obliged and he was sleeping the rest of the journey. I ended up paying and like what is narrated in this thread, he had guts to ask for a 5 star rating!

[ani_meher]

Originally Posted by Venkat_Figo

I have a question, Zoom car rentals are yellow plates I believe, would my standard license still be valid while driving one?

Zoom cars have black plates with yellow numbers, so they are rentals. Your standard license is valid for driving them.

[Nitronium]

This is something that has happened to me as well in BLR, where the Uber driver has dozed off at the wheel, I filed an incident report and was greeted with a similar message and a refund.

However I'd like to ask the forum at large:

1) These drivers are independent contractors who have complete control over the number of trips they choose to accept. Isn't the onus on them to responsibly draw a line at the number of hours they work? If I need an extra source of income and choose to work overtime and the government prohibited me from doing that because of labour restrictions, isn't that a violation of personal choice?

2) As far as I understand, these drivers run from surge zone to surge zone and try to maximise their revenue based on availability. If Uber were to restrict their driving hours (say to 9 hours), wouldn't that restrict their ability to earn even if they were perfectly able to drive without causing a safety hazard?

I ask these two questions only to stimulate debate. I don't necessarily think that a corporate overlord is taxing the hard working cab driver

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

The only question is - is Uber doing enough to stem this?

Fortunately Uber has emerged because of, and in an era of previously un-thought of technology. What analytics can help them? Let's suggest solutions.

I think for the driver to be that drowsy he would have been swaying even to get to you unless you work next to a busy hub junction - I would argue that Uber's algorithms should be able to catch this. The likelihood of a sane driver, weaving that way through traffic at that hour, is next to zero. They would have all drivers' GPS coordinates in real time. This can't be that hard.

Last line reminded me of the famous (or infamous) JC, and his pet phrase - "How hard can it be!"

Well, if they implement any of this "swaying" logic - all their cars might get flagged. Swaying is a way of life in our country's traffic.

And you can't put a time filter either. You can find dozing drivers at noon too. There was a video earlier showing a mini truck 'swaying' in broad day light

While I appreciate the intent, I am sure we (the people of this country) are much better equipped to fox any sort of algo. Pretty much the same reason we have a huge thread debating applicability of self running cars on our streets.

[binz]

+1 to list of folks who ended up driving their cab - and I thought I was the only one! Maybe we could have a poll?

Mine was an Uber to the Bangalore airport from Indiranagar at 4am. The driver was dozing off at the wheel and was more than happy to pull over when I offered to drive.

I hope this thread helps avert a few disasters that are just waiting to happen.

[Glessrob]

I have a car which runs on Uber and they are giving incentives only if the driver completes 50 -55 trips in 4 days (Mon - Thurs). They give approximately 40 - 45 trips for the next 3 days (Fri - Sat). This makes the drivers work for 7 days a week. Approximately 12 trips happen in average in 10 hours so you can do the math.

My driver slept for the night at Kolkata Airport since he was too tired to come home. The practices of Uber are at this point completely INHUMAN. I would be grateful if someone can complain to Human Rights Commission or other relevant places. They also are able to give such high targets only because of Pool Rides. I would request everyone to not take Pool rides so eventually it is stopped. Please consider the plight of the drivers who are working for 14 - 18 hours everyday to meet targets and generate car installment amounts.