NBC Bay Area – Uber and Lyft drivers deny service to people who use guide dogs

Editors note: Yes, robotaxi.rodeo is actually posting something relatively positive about Waymo. Uber and Lyft have been found to discriminate against people who use guide dogs. Uber even had to pay over $1 million to a person in Marin who was repeatedly discriminated against. Yet the illegal actions by Uber and Lyft continue.

The companies are currently implementing a system where users can designate that they use a guide dog. This should in theory disallow a driver from cancelling a ride for such a user. But we shall see how long this takes to implement and how effective it is. Also, users of guide dogs are not satisfied with this proposed solution because they believe that drivers should simply be better trained and that users of guide dogs should not need to go through any extra steps in order to not be discriminated against.

The reason this positing is positive towards Waymo is because they always allow service animals. But it should be pointed out that the reason they do this is because they do not have drivers. In fact, users of Waymo use the lack of a driver to co-opt the needs of people with disabilities by bringing pets. And children are riding Waymos unaccompanied. These are activities which are not allowed on paper, yet condoned by Waymo.

It must also be pointed out that Waymo still does discriminate against people with certain disabilities and who use other assistive devices.