Karen McFarlane: 0:37

Hey Brittany.

Brittany S. Hale: 0:38

Hi Karen. How are you?

Karen McFarlane: 0:41

I'm good. How are you? I am perplexed.

Brittany S. Hale: 0:47

But you know, nothing new these days. Talk to the reason. You know, I am constantly in a state of processing. And you sent me some really cool articles. And I hope we can discuss them today.

Karen McFarlane: 1:10

Yeah. Well, um I I think that this one topic we'll have a spirited conversation about. Um, it's something that showed up in the news recently, and this particular article, I'll just read the title so I'll give the view the listeners an overview. Male drivers sue Uber and Lyft over women-only ride hailing. So, okay, as a quick overview, there is a dual class action suit that basically says that Uber and Lyft, who have actually created a feature that allows women to proactively select women-only drivers, is discriminatory towards men. And the reason this feature was added was to help women feel a little bit more safe based on, you know, numerous accounts of sexual harassment or assault. And um, this was Uber and Lyft listening to their female driver, I mean riders, and trying to come up with a solution that let them feel a little bit more empowered and safe. But on the flip side, men feel like this feature is going to or has uh prevented them from basically earning money on Uber or Lyft because they can be deselected as the driver. So, I mean, there's two sides of this very controversial story. Well, initial thoughts.

Brittany S. Hale: 3:17

My first emotional reaction is somewhere between the range of cry harder and and well does this have a disparate impact? But then my question was, well, well, how many things are happening or you know, how many assaults are happening? So I went on the Uber Newsroom website and it says from 2017 to 2022 out of 6.3 billion trips, around 400,000 resulted in sexual assault or misconduct reports. And before we go any further, I think, or maybe at some point we can we can add a uh hazard just for anybody listening, that while we will not in detail uh discuss themes of sexual assault, uh, we are going to discuss sexual assault generally. So give you a little time to uh take a breather if you need to, but otherwise we'll keep going. So out of those 400,000 over those five years, right? That's it seems like it's fairly rare. That's roughly one in five million of all trips. And uh their definition of sexual assault um is it includes about 21 categories, and so it's uh what they call less serious reports, which is subjective depending on a passenger's individual experience, but uh less serious reports include flirting, staring, making inappropriate comments, and they call them less serious because they're harder to categorize, right? Dis mild discomfort is harder to address, I think, than some sort of act. Um but again, they were very clear in working with experts to define what constituted this. So everything from flirting to physical assault, right? All of that was taken into account. And as a part of their response was exactly what you said, women can request to be driven by uh women or women identifying drivers, because the overwhelming majority, if not close to a hundred percent, of the alleged offenders are men.

Karen McFarlane: 6:24

And that's why the data is really important.

Brittany S. Hale: 6:26

Yes, yes, and so they call it uh SRAD, right? And so their trip matching algorithm called safety risk assessed dispatch, SRAD. And so uh the technology essentially is this if a brand new rider requests a late night trip in an area that's known for nightlife, then the algorithm is going to prioritize more experienced drivers with a strong record of late night trips and positive rider feedback. And that sounds like it makes sense, right? Yeah, you want to do the best you can to guarantee that your passengers are in good hands. Um and of course, you can't the technology can't reliably predict crimes, but it's helped to reduce assault and misconduct report rates by 10% since it launched, and is also part of this overall drop of a 44% drop in reporting rates from that five-year period that we originally talked about. So I'll just pause there.

Karen McFarlane: 7:46

I think it's also important to note that as far as I read, it's only rolled out in, I believe, LA, San Francisco, and Detroit.

Brittany S. Hale: 7:57

Yes.

unknown: 7:58

Yes.

Karen McFarlane: 7:59

So that's where the data's from, which is they're testing the feature to see if it has any results. And Brittany, you just shared those results. And look, a 44% decrease in the number of incidences or reported incidences, actually is good data that says, hey, this is working. Um and I wonder if there is some other data that they're collecting around do women feel more safe when they use it? Like what is their actual sentiment around that? Um and that probably shows up in their like NPS scores and things of that nature. But this idea, oh, and the other data point I think too that's important is that when we think about the number of drivers that are male versus female, we know there's spectrums in between. 20% of US Uber drivers and like 23, 24% of Lyft drivers are women. 80% is men, right? So those numbers actually start to gain some more context. So when we look at the flip side of these lawsuits saying, hey, this is sex-based discrimination, that's you know, reducing male drivers' opportunities, we have to look at it from that lens as well, right? Because when you think about supply and demand, right? If there's only 20% of Uber drivers are women, and I want a woman-only driver, actually, I'm gonna have less of a chance of getting a ride or getting a ride in a timely fashion. Sure. Sure. So we could also argue that women's opportunities were already reduced.

Brittany S. Hale: 9:58

Yes. Yes. And so I guess again, when I'm thinking about this from a data perspective, and you know, even from an employer perspective, right? And then of course, we know the the question of the Uber drivers being considered employers versus contractors, right? There's always that tension. Um when you are looking to anti-discrimination laws, of course, California has really strong ones. But the key that you're looking for is to your point, disparate impact. Am I as a male Uber driver less likely to earn as a male Uber driver because I'm male? That's going to be the question. Um the data, at least the publicly available data that we have suggests that that isn't necessarily the case. Um but again, you know, anyone can bring a claim for anything. Um and again, you know, this is a SAS-based business, right? The customers always write. And we've seen this phenomenon happen in a number of spaces. So I've been in Mexico, and there are cab companies that uh at the time they were um pink cabs, and that was to denote that they only transported women. And so you would call, you would order the cab, you would get a password, and then upon arrival, this was of course before Uber, you know, took over, uh, but you would get a password, and then upon arrival, the driver's to give you that same password to guarantee that that's your driver. Right. And so you have these, this idea is not new, is my point. Which means that the problem is not new.

Karen McFarlane: 12:29

Right, right. I can't remember the name of the company. It escapes me right now. But even after Uber started, there was one that was focused on females. It would only pick up female riders, it only had female drivers. Again, showing that that problem was persistent. I wish I could remember it. If I remember it, I'll put it in the show notes so that we can see if it's still actually in business. But it kind of correlates to in general, right? This um feeling that women aren't always in safe spaces around some men, right? If we kind of think generally, and that there always needs to be some sort of protective measures to ensure that um certain things don't happen to us. My off my other question would be: what are this is a broader, there's two things, two things. So, one, there's a feature that we just talked about, female only drivers. Um, what if there was a feature that was male-only drivers, like both sexes could choose what type of driver they have? What kind of disparate impact might that actually have? Like it would be an interesting test.

Brittany S. Hale: 13:59

That would be an interesting test. And I was had the same concerns about the problem, just from a different perspective. But I I do think that that would be an interesting experiment. You know, I mean, in the article, you have a woman, Celeste Juarez, who said that she's had many uncomfortable experiences with male drivers, especially going on a girl's night out. And she said, look, as a woman, it's about my safety. I want to get to my destination without any repercussions or any unwanted sexual advances. I don't have anxiety coming home late or having to worry about whether or not I will make it home. And I think we need to consider the broader implications of this because this isn't just about a Friday night out partying with your friends. This is your ability to work late. This is your ability to travel for work. This is your ability to really be mobile, right? If you if your planes late and you get in on a work trip or you know, super late. There's always the question of your safety. There's always the option to share your trip with someone. Um, and so I guess, and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but have you ever been in an Uber that made you feel uncomfortable, unsafe?

Karen McFarlane: 15:33

So, to be quite honest, you know, I don't ever feel fully safe in an Uber. I mean, let's just think about the concept of an Uber all my life growing up. It's like, don't get into cars with strangers. And now we have an app that says get into car. We actually ask a stranger to come pick us up, right? And so the fact of the matter is these are always strangers. I'm always aware of trying to be aware of my surroundings. Um, you know, there's little things that you can do to kind of check the door locks, or you know, one major thing is if an Uber driver offers me water, I'm not going to take it. That has happened a couple of times, right? The nice Uber driver is like, oh, you know, you just got in from a long flight. Would you like some water? And while I might want it, right? I say no. Um, there was a time, and this is not specifically Uber or Lyft, but I got, I forget where I was. I want to say I went to Cleveland. I had not I had not been to that airport before. And I was looking for the ride share area. And I was so tired. I hadn't had any sleep. And a driver came up to me and asked me, you know, where I was going, and offered to take me. Like an idiot. I was like, sure. Right. And ended up following him to what ultimately was where the ride share places were, but I didn't know that at the time because it wasn't easily seen. So, and then I got in the car, and it wasn't until I was in the car driving that I was like, what did you do? Right. You just got in this car and hopefully he's a decent guy that's going to drop me off. Right. And I ended up having a conversation with him to make sure he was a decent guy for him to see that I was a person, all this type of stuff. Because I started panicking in my head. And he actually was, right? Um, and so what I now normally do is at an airport in particular, I will go to the taxi stand. I don't necessarily take an Uber or Lyft because for whatever reason I have more trust in the taxi than I do in Uber and Lyft. I don't know why. Maybe because I feel like they've had to go through some very rigorous um credentialing and training and maintaining their certifications versus potentially an Uber or Lyft driver, which you know begs more questions about why are 400,000 people reporting, you know, misconduct or assault. What is or is not broken in that background check process? But before we talk about that a little bit, I just want to know if you've had any uncomfortable situations if you want to answer in an Uber or Lyft.

Brittany S. Hale: 18:50

I have. You know, like there's some sort of try to make sure that someone knows the the driver knows, you know, that there's someone on the other hand who knows what's going on.

Karen McFarlane: 19:15

Yeah.

Brittany S. Hale: 19:16

But um I was in Boston coming from work, and the driver, I was visibly on the phone, and the driver had the music up loud, so I asked him to turn it down. So he saw I was on the phone. So he would periodically at certain points turn the music up. So I would have to talk to him and turn it down. And it felt like this weird macabre kind of game. And I just remember feeling like chills. I was like, I don't like this. And so I, you know, my intuition, instinct, whatever, told I said, just get out, I'll get out at the end of the block and I'll walk. And so I went and he did it, you know. Most of the drivers say drive, they go, you know, they go past, they mind their business. And he stayed. And I realized he was trying to see which building I was going into. Oh wow. And that felt really. Uh frustrating and frightening. And so I actually there was like a break in the in the building. So I actually went through that break to go through the back of the buildings so that I could go to my apartment through the back way and he would not see where I was. Wow. And when I peeked, he he was like still on that street. So that to me, that made me feel very unsafe. And you know, this was not at the point where Uber had the type of system. You know, this was maybe around 2017. So you have these moments that stick out in your mind. Yeah. Where you realize, and even, you know, again, with you driving with this person, you're like, oh, okay, my executive function is burnt out. I want the easiest choice. And so then that happens and it's frustrating. Um I've had friends refuse even rides from women drivers because sometimes the women may have a mail along and they'll say, Oh, you know, my my brother, my boyfriend's driving with me because they want to make sure there's no like weird person. And while that may be legitimate, that doesn't feel comfortable for another woman, you know. So it's like you can say, Yeah, I'm not, I'm not getting in the car with two with two people. Um, and I think on the whole, it's just really, really sad that we even have to think this hard and think this critically about a ride share service. Like this is something that should be a great way for everyone to make money.

Karen McFarlane: 22:30

You know, I agree, but at the same time, it's it's for everyone, right? Which has its pros and its cons. You can take your car and go make some extra money, but it's not necessarily, I mean, I know it's changed now, but in the beginning, it wasn't necessarily like a career somebody chose and we're trying, we're relying on like taxi drivers, taxi cab drivers, right? It was just someone trying to do a side hustle. And, you know, now that it's shifted, you know, there are obviously full-time Uber drivers, uh, but the model is risky. I mean, it's just the same as you know, Airbnb. Like we're taking these properties that are sitting there unused and monetizing them in very unique and new ways, which I think is awesome. But it comes with all of these risks. And the fact of the matter is we are all strangers. You have someone pick you up and drop you off at your apartment, right? They now have access to information. You'll never see them again, but they know exactly who you are in some, you know, in some cases, right? And so those are things that we just have to generally be mindful of. Uh, but also the company has to try to put in some strict protocols, right? To make sure that the people that are getting behind the wheel not only have valid driver's license and insurance, the basics, but they're upstanding citizens of society. And I think that right now there are limited tools for that, also because of privacy. So they do background checks, right? The extent of which I'm not really sure. Um, you know, the the photo is really important, but look, do they have conditions for which you cannot become a driver? I don't know the answer to that exactly. And do those conditions matter?

Brittany S. Hale: 24:41

Right. Because if it's if you've committed non non-physical or non-violent harm in the past, right, will that allow you to earn? Um, you know, and if it doesn't, that's an incentive to engage in deceptive practices in order to earn it, right? You know, if your your mother registers, but you're uh actually driving and doing these things. I've seen that a lot, right? Sometimes you're breaks and you see maybe an older person and then you see young people come and drop them off the food. And you know, you want to you want to give the benefit of the doubt. Of course. In a creator economy, in a gig economy. And you also want to be safe.

Karen McFarlane: 25:37

You know, yeah, you know, you don't want to stop people from earning a living, right? You you want to create those opportun opportunities, and particularly now in this very volatile uh economy, you want to open doors to people. So I think it's just twofold. It's one, you know, the companies that are creating these tools have to do as much as they can. Um, we as users have a responsibility as well to, you know, promote and secure our own safety. Right. You just cannot get into cars blindly and hope that everything is going to be okay. You have to take steps to ensure that everything is going to be okay. It's okay to be a little bit paranoid. It's okay to have someone drop you off a block away from your house or whatever, whatever those measures are. Um and but it but also as a society, we have to be cognizant of the disparity in safety, real and perceived, that some groups may feel and be sensitive to that. And understand that while it may not be equal all the time, it has to be still fair and equitable, which is a different calculation than equality. And lawsuits like this that are trying to undermine that equity are problematic, in my view.

Brittany S. Hale: 27:16

Right. And so, you know, I see I see a lot of conversation happening around men, right? And uh kind of recentering men when it comes to to labor and loneliness and and all of these things. And when I look at the lawsuit, one of the other things that came up was wow, so this this could be the impetus for men to really become champions of protecting people, right? Or advocating against violent crime because it is impeding your ability to earn. And given that 80 to 81 percent of people arrested for violent crimes are men, right? It it seems incumbent upon men to figure out what's going on there, you know.

Karen McFarlane: 28:19

I really love that framing. I really do. And I hope that that happens. I hope they listen to this and they they look at it from that that vantage point instead of feeling like victims of a circumstance, it's stepping up into what they may believe to be their traditional role, right? In the protection lane, right, and fixing the problem that is amongst primarily them.

Brittany S. Hale: 28:50

Right. A Celeste Suarez, right, who wants to go out on a night out is not your problem, right? Your problem is the person who made Celeste Suarez feel like it's unsafe to do that. That's your problem, you know? Yeah.

Karen McFarlane: 29:11

And and by fixing that, you fix many other things, right? If you are working on men and their attitude towards women, right, that has a domino effect that perseveres beyond Uber and Lyft, but into so many different facets of society. So that's why your reframing is so important. So thanks for making that point.

Brittany S. Hale: 29:42

I I hope I hope people listen with an air of openness. Because again, it's it's not to cast blame. It's something that you said that I think is really important. As you were describing it, you were very careful to say some men, right? Some people were not, you know, I don't I don't think it's uh fair, accurate, or appropriate to place the label on everyone. Right. And I also think that there's a number of ways to to address the issue.

Karen McFarlane: 30:22

Absolutely. And it's working together to figure out you know what the disparities are and what the opportunities are, right? And how we how we can come to a solution together is where we need to focus instead of fighting each other on what the solution is. That's a sign of great leadership. It is we can get to a state of eudaimonia when we do stuff like that. And that makes sense. There you go. So we'll follow this case and see what happens. Um, but to all the ladies out there, be careful with anything that you do, and all the men get the other men in check that aren't doing what they're supposed to do.

Brittany S. Hale: 31:17

Women are not making your lives harder.

Karen McFarlane: 31:18

They are not. We just want to get somewhere. Hey, Brittany.

Brittany S. Hale: 31:24

Hi, Karen. How are you?

Karen McFarlane: 31:26

I'm good. How are you?

Brittany S. Hale: 31:28

Um perplexed, but you know, nothing new these days. What you mean, perplexed? Talk to them, what's the reading? You know, I am constantly in a state of processing. And you sent me some really cool articles, and I hope we can discuss them today.

Karen McFarlane: 31:51

Yeah. Well, I think that this one topic we'll have a spirited discuss conversation about. Um, it's something that showed up in the news recently, and this particular article, I'll just read the title so I'll give the view the listeners an overview. Male drivers sue Uber and Lyft over women-only ride hailing. So, as a quick overview, VR is a dual-class action suit that basically says that Uber and Lyft, who have actually created a feature that allows women to proactively select women-only drivers, is discriminatory towards men. And the reason this feature was added was to help women feel a little bit more safe based on you know, numerous accounts of sexual harassment or assault. And this was Uber and Lyft listening to their female driver, I mean, riders, and trying to come up with a solution that let them feel a little bit more empowered and safe. But on the flip side, men feel like this feature is going to or has prevented them from basically earning money on Uber or Lyft because they can be deselected as the driver. So, I mean, there's two sides of this very controversial story. Well, initial thoughts.

Brittany S. Hale: 33:48

But then my question was, well, well, how many things are happening, or you know, how many assaults are happening? So I went on the Uber Newsroom site and it says from 2017 to 2022, 6.3 billion trips around 400,000 resulted in sexual assault or misconduct reports. And before we go any further, I think, or maybe at some point we can add a hazard just for anybody listening, that while we will not in detail discuss the themes of sexual assault, we are going to discuss sexual assault generally. So give you a little little time to take a breather if you need to, but otherwise, we'll keep going. So of those 400,000 over those five years, right? Seems like it's fairly rare. That's roughly one in five million of all trips. And their definition of sexual assault um is it includes about 21 categories. And so it's what they call less serious reports, which is subjective depending on a passenger's individual experience. But less serious reports include flirting, staring, making inappropriate comments, and they call them less serious because they're harder to categorize, right? This mild discomfort is harder to address, I think, than some sort of act. Um, but again, they were very clear in working with experts to define what constituted this. So everything from flirting to physical assault, right? All of that was taken into account. And as part of their response was exactly what you said, women can request to be driven by uh women or women identifying drivers, because the overwhelming majority, if not close to a hundred percent, of the alleged offenders were men. And that's why the data is really important. Yes, yes, and so they call it SRAD, right? And so their trip matching algorithm called safety risk assessed dispatch, SRAD. And so uh the technology essentially is this if a brand new rider requests a late night trip in an area that's no for nightlife, then the algorithm is going to prioritize more experienced drivers with a strong record of late night trips and positive rider feedback. And that sounds like it makes sense, right? You want to do the best you can to guarantee that your passengers are in good hands. And of course, you can't the technology can't reliably predict crimes, but it's helped to reduce assault and misconduct report rates by 10% since it launched, and is also part of this overall drop of a 44% drop in reporting rates from that five-year period that we originally talked about.

Karen McFarlane: 37:20

So I'll just pause there. I think it's also important to note that as far as I read, it's only rolled out in, I believe, LA, San Francisco, and Detroit.

Brittany S. Hale: 37:32

Yes, yes.

Karen McFarlane: 37:33

So that's where the data's from, which is they're testing the feature to see if it has any results. And Brittany, you just shared those results. And look, a 44% decrease in the number of incidences or reported incidences actually is good data that says, hey, this is working. And I wonder if there is some other data that they're collecting around do women feel more safe when they use it, like what is their actual sentiment around that? And that probably shows up in their like NPS scores and things of that nature. But this idea, oh, and the other data point I think too, that's important is that when we think about the number of drivers that are male versus female, we know there's spectrums in between. 20% of US Uber drivers and like 23, 24% of Lyft drivers are women. 80% is men, right? So those numbers actually start to gain some more context. So when we look at the flip side of these lawsuits saying, hey, this is sex-based discrimination, that's you know, reducing male drivers' opportunities, we have to look at it from that lens as well, right? Because when you think about supply and demand, right? If there's only 20% of Uber drivers are women and I want a woman-only driver, actually I'm gonna have less of a chance of getting a ride or getting a ride in a timely fashion. Sure. Sure. So we could also argue that women's opportunities were already reduced.

Brittany S. Hale: 39:20

Yes. Yes. And so I guess again, when I'm thinking about this from a data perspective and, you know, even from an employer perspective, right? And then of course, we know the question of Uber drivers being considered employers versus contractors, right? There's always that tension. Um when you are looking to anti-discrimination laws, of course, California has really strong ones. But the key that you're looking for is to your point, disparate impact. Am I as a male Uber driver less likely to earn as a male Uber driver because I'm male? That's going to be the question, right? The data, at least the publicly available data that we have, suggests that that isn't necessarily the case. But again, you know, anyone can bring a claim for anything. And again, you know, this is. The SaaSpace business, right? It's the customers all raise rent. We've seen this phenomenon happen in a number of spaces. So I've been in Mexico, and there are cab companies that at the time they were pink cabs. And that was to denote that they only transported women. And so you would call, you would order the cab, you would get a password. And then upon arrival, this was of course before Uber, you know, took over, but you would get a password. And then upon arrival, the driver's to give you that same password to guarantee that that's your driver. Right. And so you have these, this idea is not new, is my point. Which means that the problem is not new.

Karen McFarlane: 41:19

Right. Right. I can't remember the name of the company. It escapes me right now. But even after Uber started, there was one that was focused on females. It would only pick up female riders, it only had female drivers. Again, showing that that problem was persistent. I wish I could remember it. If I remember it, I'll put it in the show notes so that we can see if it's still actually in business. But it kind of correlates to, in general, right? Feeling that women aren't always in safe spaces around some men, right? If we kind of think generally, and that there always needs to be some sort of protective measures to ensure that certain things don't happen to us. My off my other question would be what are this is a broader, there's two things. Two things. So one, there's a feature that we just talked about, female only drivers. What if there was a feature that was male-only drivers? Like both sexes could choose what type of driver they have. What kind of disparate impact might that actually have? Like it would be an interesting test.

Brittany S. Hale: 42:37

That would be an interesting test and was had the same concerns about the problem, just from a different perspective. But I do think that that would be an interesting experiment. You know, I mean, in the article, you have a woman Celeste Juarez, who said that she's had many uncomfortable experiences with male drivers, especially going on a girl's night out. And she said, look, as a woman, it's about my safety. I want to get to my destination without any repercussion or any unwanted sexual advances. I don't have anxiety coming home late or having to worry about whether or not I will make it home. And I think we need to consider the broader implications of this because this isn't just about a Friday night out partying with your friends. This is your ability to work late. This is your ability to travel for work. This is your ability to really be mobile, right? If you are if your planes late and you get in on a work trip or, you know, super late, there's always the question of your safety. There's always the option to share your trip with someone. Um and so I guess, and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but have you ever been in an Uber that makes you feel uncomfortable, unsafe?

Karen McFarlane: 43:57

So to be quite honest, you know, I don't ever feel fully safe in an Uber. I mean, let's just think about the concept of an Uber. All my life growing up, it's like don't get into cars with strangers. And now we have an app that says get into cars. We actually ask a stranger to come pick us up, right? And so the fact of the matter is these are always strangers. I'm always aware of trying to be aware of my surroundings. You know, there's little things that you can do to kind of check the door locks, or you know, one major thing is if an Uber driver offers me water, I'm not going to take it. That has happened a couple of times, right? The nice Uber driver is like, oh, you know, you just got in from a long flight. Would you like some water? And while I might want it, right? I said no. There was a time, and this is not specifically Uber or Lyft, but I got, I forget where I was. I want to say I went to Cleveland. I had not I had not been to that airport before, and I was looking for the ride share area. And I was so tired, I hadn't had any sleep, and a driver came up to me and asked me, you know, where I was going and offered to take me like an idiot. I was like, sure. And ended up following him to what ultimately was where the ride share places were, but I didn't know that at the time because it wasn't easily seen. So and then I got in the car, and it wasn't until I was in the car driving that I was like, what did you do? Right. You just got in this car and hopefully he's a decent guy that's gonna drop me off. Right. And I ended up having conversation with him to make sure he was a decent guy for him to see that I was a person, all this type of stuff. Because I started panicking in my head. And he actually was, right? Um, and so what I now normally do is at an airport in particular, I will go to the taxi stand. I don't necessarily take an Uber or Lyft because for whatever reason, I have more trust in the taxi than I do in Uber and Lyft. I don't know why, maybe because I feel like they've had to go through some very rigorous credentialing and training and maintaining their certifications versus potentially an Uber or Lyft driver, which you know begs more questions about why are 400,000 people reporting, you know, misconduct or assault? What is or is not broken in that background check process? But before we talk about that a little bit, I just want to know if you've had any uncomfortable situations if you want to answer in an Uber or Lyft.

Brittany S. Hale: 46:58

Have. There's one that sticks out for me, especially. For the most part, if I'm in an depending on time of day or whatever, I usually try to be on the phone. You know, like there's some sort of try to make sure that someone knows the the driver knows, you know, that there's someone on the other end who knows what's going on. Yeah. But um I was in Boston coming from work, and the driver, I was visibly on the phone, and the driver had the music up loud, so I asked him to turn it down. So he saw I was on the phone. So he would periodically at certain points turn the music up so I would have to talk to him and turn it down. And it felt like this weird macabre kind of game. And I just remember feeling like chills. I was like, I don't like this. So I you know, my intuition, instinct, whatever, I said, just get out, I'll get out at the end of the block and I'll walk. And so I went and he didn't, you know, most of the drivers they drive, they go, you know, they go past, they mind their business. And he stayed. And I realized he was trying to see which building I was going into.

Karen McFarlane: 48:28

Wow.

Brittany S. Hale: 48:29

And that felt really frustrating and frightening. And so I actually there was like a break in the in the building. So I actually went through that break to go through the back of the buildings so that I could go to my apartment through the back way and he would not see where I was. And when I peeked, he he was like still on that street. So that to me, that made me feel very unsafe. And you know, this was not at the point where Uber had the type of system, you know, this was maybe around 2017. So you have these moments that stick out in your mind where you realize, and even, you know, again, with you driving with this person, you're like, oh, okay, my executive function is burnt out. I want the easiest choice. And so then that happens and it's frustrating. I've had friends refuse even rides from women drivers because sometimes the women may have a mail along and they'll say, Oh, you know, my my brother, my boyfriend's driving with me because they want to make sure there's no like weird person. While that may be legitimate, that doesn't feel comfortable for another woman, you know. So have you saying, Yeah, I'm not I'm not getting in the car with two with two people. Um I think on the whole, it's just really, really sad that we even have to think this hard and think this critically about a ride share service. Like this is something that should be a great way for everyone to make money.

Karen McFarlane: 50:21

You know, I agree, but at the same time, it's it's for everyone, which has its pros and its cons. You can take your car and go make some extra money, but it's not necessarily. I mean, I know it's changed now, but in the beginning, it wasn't necessarily like a career somebody chose and we're trying, we're relying on like taxi drivers, taxi cab drivers. It was just someone trying to do a side hustle. And, you know, now that it's shifted, you know, there are obviously full-time Uber drivers, but the model is risky. I mean, it's just the same as you know, Airbnb. Like we're taking these properties that are sitting there unused and monetizing them in very unique and new ways, which I think is awesome. But it comes with all of these risks. And the fact of the matter is, we are all strangers. You have someone pick you up and drop you off at your apartment, right? They now have access to information. You'll never see them again, but they know exactly who you are in some, you know, in some cases, right? And so those are things that we just have to generally be mindful of. But also the company has to try to put in some strict protocols, right? To make sure that the people that are getting behind the wheel not only have valid driver's license and insurance, the basics, but they're upstanding citizens of society. And I think that right now there are limited tools for that, also because of privacy. So they do background checks, right? The extent of which I'm not really sure. Um, you know, photos are really important, but look, do they have conditions for which you cannot become a driver? I don't know the answer to that exactly. And do those conditions matter?

Brittany S. Hale: 52:19

Right. Because if it's if you've committed non-physical or nonviolent harm in the past, right, will that allow you to uh, you know, are there and if it doesn't, that's an incentive to engage in deceptive practices in order to maybe you know if your mother registers but you're uh driving and doing these things. I've seen that a lot, right? Sometimes you're breathing and you see maybe an older person and then you see young people come dropping off the food and you know you want to you want to give the benefit of the doubt. Of course. In a creator economy, in a gig economy, and you also want to be safe.

Karen McFarlane: 53:08

Yeah, you know, you don't want to stop people from earning a living, right? You you want to create those opportun opportunities, and particularly now in this very volatile uh economy, you want to open doors to people. So I think it's just twofold. It's one, you know, the companies that are creating these tools have to do as much as they can. We as users have a responsibility as well to promote and secure our own safety. We just cannot get into cars blindly and hope that everything is going to be okay. You have to take steps to ensure that everything is gonna be okay. It's okay to be a little bit paranoid. It's okay to have someone drop you off a block away from your house or whatever, whatever those measures are. But also as a society, we have to be cognizant of the disparity in safety, real and perceived, that some groups may feel and be sensitive to that and understand that while it may not be equal all the time, it has to be still fair and equitable, which is a different calculation than equality. And lawsuits like this that are trying to undermine that equity are problematic, in my view.

Brittany S. Hale: 54:35

Right. And so, you know, I see I see a lot of conversation happening around men, right? And kind of recentering men when it comes to labor and loneliness and all of these things. And when I look at the lawsuit, one of the other things that came up was wow, so this could be the impetus for men to really become champions of protecting people, right? Or advocating against violent crime because it is impeding your ability to earn. And given that 80 to 81% of people arrested for violent crimes are men, right? It it seems incumbent upon men to figure out what's going on there.

Karen McFarlane: 55:24

I really love that framing. I really do. And I hope that that happens. I hope they listen to this and they they look at it from that that vantage point. Instead of feeling like victims of a circumstance, it's stepping up into what they may believe to be their traditional role, right, in the protection lane and fixing the problem that is amongst primarily them. Right.

Brittany S. Hale: 55:53

A Celeste Suarez, right, who wants to go out on a night out is not your problem. Right. Your problem is the person who made Celeste Suarez feel like it's unsafe to do that. That's your problem, you know? So yeah.

Karen McFarlane: 56:15

And by fixing that, you fix many other things, right? If you are working on men and their attitude towards women, right, that has a domino effect that perseveres beyond Uber and Lyft, but into so many different facets of society. So that's why your reframing is so important. So thanks for making that point.

Brittany S. Hale: 56:42

I hope people listen with an air of openness because again, it's it's not to cast blame. It's something that you said that I think was really important. As you were describing, you were very careful to say some men, right? Against some people, like we're not, you know, I don't I don't think it's fair, accurate, or appropriate to place the label on everyone. Right. And I also think that there's a number of ways to to address the issue.

Karen McFarlane: 57:15

Absolutely. And it's working together to figure out, you know, what the disparities are and what the opportunities are, right? And how we how we can come to a solution together is where we need to focus instead of fighting each other on what the solution is. That's a sign of great leadership. We can get to a state of eudaimonia, and that makes sense to you. There you go. So we'll follow this case and see what happens. But to all the ladies out there, be careful with anything that you do, and all the men get the other men in check that aren't doing what they're supposed to do.

Brittany S. Hale: 58:03

The women are not making your lives harder.

Karen McFarlane: 58:06

They are not. We just want to get somewhere. All right, Brittany. Until the next time. Bye, and bye to our executive producer, Mina. There she is.