COVID-19 Pandemic
Doctors and charlatans
My guess is that the mask rule struck down by a federal judge (a Donald Trump appointee)[1] is the basis for Uber and Lyft mask requirements.
Uber and Lyft have been requiring both drivers and passengers to wear masks (not necessarily correctly) and have closed the front passenger seat, reducing the passenger capacity of most cars to three (plus the driver).
I have not heard any reaction from either company to this ruling. I’ve had to turn down a number of rides because there were too many passengers. One even attempted to invoke a Google search result for an UberX ride saying that the limit was four passengers. Nope, no dice. Uber directly says three.
But with this ruling,[2] I don’t see it being tenable for drivers to continue to enforce these rules. Passengers do get violent.[3] And as before, passengers can report drivers for not complying with the rules, but really not the other way around.[4]
Tierney Sneed, “CDC mask mandate for travelers no longer in effect following judge’s ruling, official says,” CNN, April 18, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/18/politics/cdc-mask-mandate-ruling/index.html
- [1]Tierney Sneed, “CDC mask mandate for travelers no longer in effect following judge’s ruling, official says,” CNN, April 18, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/18/politics/cdc-mask-mandate-ruling/index.html↩
- [2]Tierney Sneed, “CDC mask mandate for travelers no longer in effect following judge’s ruling, official says,” CNN, April 18, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/18/politics/cdc-mask-mandate-ruling/index.html↩
- [3]Danielle Abril, “Uber Drivers Are Victims of Violence Too,” Fortune, December 10, 2019, https://fortune.com/2019/12/10/uber-driver-safety-report-sexual-assualt/; David Benfell, “The vulnerability of Uber and Lyft driving,” Not Housebroken, February 18, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/02/18/the-vulnerability-of-uber-and-lyft-driving/; Aarian Marshall, “A Criminologist Says Uber’s Crime Report Is ‘Highly Alarming,’” Wired, December 6, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/criminologist-uber-crime-report-highly-alarming/↩
- [4]David Benfell, “The expendable worker,” Not Housebroken, May 14, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/07/05/the-expendable-worker/↩