In the future, ride-hailing passengers may conjure autonomous vehicles to their doorsteps with a few taps in an app. Currently, the vehicles come equ

I’m a Lyft Driver. My Passengers Act Like I’m Part of the App

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2021-09-05 06:00:05

In the future, ride-hailing passengers may conjure autonomous vehicles to their doorsteps with a few taps in an app. Currently, the vehicles come equipped with drivers. Some passengers, however, seem to have moved beyond our technological limitations to a conceptual world where human drivers have fallen into desuetude. In these riders’ minds, we are already in an era of autonomous vehicles.

I’m a flesh-and-blood Lyft driver in Portland, Oregon. I drive a 2016 white Kia Optima Hybrid. I pick up passengers in the early morning dark. When I begin to accelerate with a rider in my back seat, I sometimes imagine after reaching a certain speed that the real me disappears. I’m replaced by an illusory me—the generic, invisible driver whom many Lyft passengers seem to have in mind.

When I started working as a Lyft driver a few years ago, I talked and acted the way I do among the many strangers I engage with every day. But I soon found that passengers acted differently from how I expected they would in a stranger’s car with the stranger behind the wheel. Later, I realized my behavior had changed too.