[NAGDU] Rideshare denials

Sat May 25 17:27:53 UTC 2024

Interestingly during last year's American Council Of The Blind national convention, Uber also came and met with a group during one of the small rec sessions at the American Council Of The Blind national convention. They made tons of promises which ended up, at least initially, not being fulfilled. One of those was a dedicated phone line that we as handler could call when denied. Initially the phone line worked. Then it stopped working and was only dedicated to drivers. But enough hell was raised that Uber did resolve the problem. My only concern is that while they did fulfill some remedies enabling Guide and serviced all users to more easily report denials, it seemed that a lot of what they were saying during that session was lip service just to make everybody present happy. Be mindful of that. Watch for that. Call them on it if necessary. 
Vanessa and the zoo  
Sent from my iPhone

> On May 25, 2024, at 11:18 AM, Al Elia via NAGDU <nagdu at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Fellow NAGDU members,
> 
> I want everyone to know that NFB has been working and continues to work  with the rideshare companies to address the problem of denials. You have all heard me talk about the SelfID system that we proposed to them, and that they are investigating how to implement. I hope that we will hear from at least one of them this summer on a timeline for implementation. While it will not solve all of our problems overnight, we believe it will be more effective and less burdensome on us as riders than the current denial reporting/investigation system. We also believe the differences between our proposed  SelfID system and the one Uber implemented elsewhere in 2021 will lead to greater reductions in denials and a better rider experience when denials occur.
> 
> An Uber representative  will be presenting at our convention in Orlando to both the NAGDU seminar and business meeting, as well as holding a town-hall session for all NFB members. We expect them to tell us about their recent, current, and future plans to address denials and accessibility. We hope the NAGDU and NFB membership will respectfully but firmly encourage them to do more and move more quickly.
> 
> As a result of our advocacy, both Uber and Lyft have improved their driver education around service animals. We know that education will not itself  solve the denials problem, but we believe it is important to assure that drivers understand the difference between pets and service animals. It is also important to ensure that drivers who deny cannot claim ignorance, whether ignorance that a dog is a service animal or that they are required by law and policy to transport them, which we have been told are the primary reasons drivers say they refused to transport a service animal.  NFB has impressed upon the companies that agreeing to company terms and policies without reading them is no excuse, and that just as the companies insist on holding riders to arbitration and class waivers even if they didn’t read them, they need to hold drivers to their agreement to transport service animals even if they didn’t read them.
> 
> Regarding resolutions, NFB passed resolutions condemning and deploring Uber and Lyft in 2022. See [2022 Resolutions](https://nfb.org/resources/speeches-and-reports/resolutions/2022-resolutions) No. 2022-13 and 2022-14. Those resolutions remain NFB policy until they are withdrawn. I do not expect NFB to withdraw them until Lyft and Uber have demonstrated a less tolerant approach to drivers who deny riders with service animals. NFB generally does not entertain resolutions that restate current NFB policy unless something has changed to warrant a new resolution. Unfortunately, not much has changed with respect to rideshare denials. That said, as a result of our advocacy, Uber and Lyft have addressed one of the demands of our resolutions by making complete ride  history available, including cancelled rides. If this is not active in your app, it should be soon.
> 
> Finally, I’m unclear what more we would ask NFB to do. Because of the aforementioned arbitration terms, it is very difficult to sue rideshare companies in court and obtain systemic relief. Doing so requires member plaintiffs who have never signed up to use one of the rideshare companies, but who can legitimately claim that they would sign up for an account if not for rampant denials. At this point, it is very difficult to find a guide dog user  who has the technology to use rideshare but has never used rideshare, especially since nearly all of us have at some point signed up for both in the hope that we can get a driver from one if we are denied by the other.  Even were we to find such members, the litigation would almost certainly cut off our discussions with Uber and Lyft, thus depriving us of the ability to ensure that whatever they build for SelfID or some other solution actually works and benefits us. We have already had to explain why a small tweak to a potential solution would result in that potential solution becoming a definite additional problem. As for protests, we have discussed them, but believe to be effective we would need at least fifty guide dog handlers to march somewhere. We have also discussed needing to have the protest during the week for maximum effect, and that the best place to protest is likely in front of Uber and/or Lyft’s HQs in San Francisco. We are concerned about being able to get at least fifty guide dog users to San Francisco, likely have to spend at least one night there, and take off work to do that during the week. While we certainly would welcome the participation of our non-guide-dog using federation family as well, we believe it is important for media optics to have a predominantly guide-dog using protest population, given what we’d be protesting.
> 
> All of that is not  to say we are meekly awaiting solutions. We are working to develop self-help resources  to allow guide dog users to go to small claims court to pursue monetary damages in states where that is allowed. We are also working to ensure that paratransit systems hold rideshare companies accountable for guide dog denials when those systems subsidize rideshares for riders with guide dogs. We believe these efforts, along with our direct advocacy with the rideshare companies, will be most effective in addressing the rideshare denials we all seek to reduce and eliminate.
> 
> If others have ideas of what more NFB can do to address rideshare denials, I welcome those ideas and, if they are workable, I would be happy to present them to the advocacy team. I also look forward to further  discussion at the convention in Orlando.
> 
> Thank you all very much.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> /Æ
> 
> Al Elia
> 
> _______________________________________________
> NAGDU mailing list
> NAGDU at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nagdu_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NAGDU:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nagdu_nfbnet.org/val4dogs%40gmail.com