Lyft Driving Driving Habits

Apparently people are giving up their cars in response to the ease of using Lyft — a lot of them. This was not necessarily an expected effect of the ride-sharing app, but it’s an interesting trend, especially in a country where driving your own car is such an integral part of the culture. With nearly a quarter of a million affected that is a significant change in attitude.

What could be driving that? Is just ease of use? Reduction of stress? Or is it something economic that has made it a more attractive option. The presence of the service seemingly deprioritized car ownership, which can be expensive, and the stress on the commute can be high if you are looking at a lot of traffic.

The idea of self-driving cars was also popular, which is interesting given that we are talking about a ride-hailing service that has been a source of income for a lot of people, who would presumably be giving that up, and just becoming passengers.

The Gig Economy, when it shifts to The Robot Economy, is going to undergo an interesting evolution. Will it mean Universal Basic Income? Does that seek to address an issue that never needs to arrive? Technology is supposed to make life easier; not to replace you, and this is the real ethical conundrum to solve; the real problem to be solved.

Personally, I like Lyft and Uber because I solve my own problem by helping someone else handle theirs. Will I not use if there are no humans driving? No — I’d at least try it … because robots, but it would feel weird after a while to start moving through an entirely artificial world.

It’s strange, but I think in the same way that Etsy developed as a response to mass produced cheap rubbish, that a business with human employees may be able to use that as a salable thing — a gimmick. We’re a way off, you might think, from this kind of thing — but the mistake that is being made is in thinking that the robots that take over your job have to be a full on analogue of a human being. When a single function needs to be performed that already requires a human being to act in a repetitive robotic manner the door is already opened for a simple robot to step in. Who needs emotions to pick and pack and flip a burger, or drive a car?