Earlier this week, I asked readers for their worst taxi/rideshare trips stories. I honestly didn’t know how awful those rides could get. One former driver recalled when he was involved in a gunfight. Someone else shared when their driver went rogue and drove on a sidewalk. Here are the worst of the worst readers had to offer:
I was out at the bar with a friend of mine. He’d picked me up so I could have a few drinks and not worry about getting home; had also offered to drive me home when I needed it. Well, he forgot that last part, and, since the bar was so close to his house, he got to the point where he couldn’t drive any more (this was an incredibly-rare lapse in judgement on his part). I summon a lyft.
A new-model Toyota SUV picks me up. Maybe it’s a Highlander or a Sequoia; I don’t know because they all look the same to me. I get in, and we’re off, and man the car is making some really terrible sounds and is really bumpy. I mention this to the driver, and he tells me it’s been acting up, but nothing to worry about; I remain unconvinced. We’re now about half a mile away from my pick-up spot, and it smells like the inside of a tyre. I tell him to pull over and lo-and-behold: it’s not just flat but SUPER flat.
He stands there dumbly until I, a little sauced, say:
“Ok, where’s your spare and where’s your jack?” I tell him to ensure the parking brake is on, we find a couple pieces of breezeblock to chock the wheels, and then I jack it up and we swap out the tyre. Another guy stops by and helps, too.
Eventually, we’re back on the road (surface streets) and he gets me home. I actually gave him a pretty generous tip, given the shitshow, because I know he’s out of the count for the rest of the night and is about to have to buy a new tyre. I remind him the spare is only good for 55 mph. He thanks me profusely for being understanding and for helping get him back on the road, and I get out of the car and saunter inside.
Not the worst possible story; hopefully, mostly, a funny one.
Submitted by: TheSchrat
Pretty much every ride I’ve ever taken in India.
I’m not a religious person, but riding in a taxi/Uber in India has made me reconsider that stance on many occasions.
The rule of the road is that size trumps everything else. Buses trump everything, trucks trump cars, cars trump motorcycles and scooters. And, yes, pedestrians are included in that equation, as they have no right of way at all. The number of times I thought my ride was going to pancake a pedestrian, including small children, was terrifying.
On one Uber ride, we pulled a U-turn and while making that U-turn, we came face to face with a mother and 10ish year old daughter crossing the street.
In most countries, the car would have stopped and let them cross before completing the U-Turn.
But in India, the Uber actually went BETWEEN the mother and daughter with mere inches of space between the car and either pedestrian on each side, and without slowing down. I expected to turn around and see the mother screaming at the car for being so careless and putting a child in danger, but nope. She just moseyed her way across the street as if it was an every day occurrence.
Probably because it is.
Submitted by: Stubb0632722
Mine was relatively tame, and tbh the guy in the comments who mentioned India should win everything, but here we go.
First ever trip to Europe (Frankfurt), traveling with my parents and sister. Go to get a taxi; guy is in a battered blue Merc sedan. My parents and sister pile into the back, and I get in the passenger seat.
The main road he took had some kind of electric rail tracks down the center; these were separated from the driving lanes by concrete curbs. The driver takes off at very high speed, jumps the curb, and starts hurtling down the tracks at VERY high speed. My mother and sister were quite pale at this point, and my father looked terrified. A train began approaching. The driver never slowed down. I grabbed the handholds for dear life. As the train gets close, the driver jumps back into the driving lane, lets the train pass as he speeds along, then jumps back into the train lane. He looks over and sees the expression on my face. “Is a different kind of driving than you’re used to, eh?” he offers in a thick German accent.
Fortunately, we all lived, and in his defense, we got to our hotel quite rapidly.
Submitted by: Sharaz Jek
I’ve got two, both in California.
First was in LA, friends and I were heading back to our hotel from a convention at the LA convention center. I called a Lyft, and what pulled up could only be described as someone’s project car from hell. It was a beat up Kia sedan that barely held all 4 of us, and I swear the driver had cut the springs and the shocks were shot or something, because every time we hit a bump I could feel the wheels bottoming out. One of the rear windows was permanently down (driver said he couldn’t raise it up) so we had to hear whatever god awful eBay exhaust he had put in there for the entirety of the trip. I think one of my friends seriously thought she was going to die in that car. To this date it is the only driver I’ve had to report to Lyft because of how dangerous the car was.
Second time was in SF, I was heading from my hotel to the Palace of Fine Arts for an event, and the driver missed the exit and instead went almost all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge until he said he “went the wrong way”. Granted I was younger back then and didn’t know SF well, but I figured something was wrong when we were on the bridge OUT of SF (this was also before Lyft was strict on driver routes and sketchy drivers were trying to milk distance costs by taking the long way around). I got pissed because I was 15 minutes late to the event, but I’m sure that “detour” doubled my ride fare.
Submitted by: aznriptide859
Honestly the vast majority of my rideshares have been completely uneventful.
One bad one sticks out in my memory. I was at a party in Miami with 2 friends and for a number of reasons we decided we needed to bail. The person who had driven us there had no intention of leaving, so we called an uber to take us back to my place in Fort Lauderdale, about a 35 mile ride up I-95. Our driver shows up in a Chevy Aveo hatch. I am 6'4", so I folded into the little crap can and hoped for a quick ride. Didn’t happen. Something was VERY wrong with the transmission of that car and it was making a sound like it was pleading for the sweet release of death. The driver did not exceed 50mph the entire way up the interstate in an area where the average traffic speed is 70 plus. Fortunately the little shitbox made it to my place, taking over an hour for a ride that should have been 35 mins.
Submitted by: FloridaMan
I’ve generally had good experiences. But I do have two.
About 20 years ago, the local airport was putting in a parking garage and they had an accident and shut down parking. I was about to go on a business trip and I parked the car at work and bummed a ride from a coworker to the airport.
When I came back, I lucked into a taxi. This was before Uber and the like and taxis in that town weren’t that common. I found out why quickly. The only thing that worked on the car was the engine. It had one head light and it was pointed straight up, and the wipers didn’t work. We got on the interstate in the heavy rain and hit over 90 quickly. I told the driver over and over again that my exit was coming up and he didn’t listen. When he realized he was missing the exit, he nailed the brakes and the car just made a ton of squealing noises and didn’t get down to the speed limit until 2 exits later. He had to turn around and come back. We did run a red light at 75 mph, but in his defense he had been on the brakes for 10 minutes before we ran it.
The second one was a Prius V in NYC. The driver would alternate between the gas and the brake and had a perfect timing on the frost heaves so the car was either pointing 30 degrees up or 30 degrees down all the times as he hit the brakes as the car landed or floored it when the car was about to go up from hitting a frost heave.
Submitted by: hoser68
Only about a month ago we had to take a cab from our hotel in Vegas to the airport. First indication of an issue was the driver opening his door to get out to help us with our bags but leaving the car in drive and rolling a couple feet. Then, as we were leaving he revved in park before shifting into drive and going straight at the bellman. Halfway down the strip he took a wrong turn and rather than correcting by rerouting (even as a tourist I knew how to get back on track) he did two u-turns to get back to the same intersection (one u-turn involved a brief and unnecesary shift into reverse in a densely congested intersection) and go from where he left off. At the airport he got half out of the car again with the car still in drive.
He acknowledged at that point that it was his first day driving a cab and we were his fourth fare. Supposedly he’d been in Vegas for 6 months prior. Fortunately, it’s a flat fare to the airport so the wrong turn didn’t matter and we had time to spare. But we were legit concerned for our safety a few times getting there. I still tipped him well and recommended he try hard not to injure anyone, including himself. Hope everyone has been okay.
Submitted by: elgordo47
I find that most rideshare drivers are terrible drivers which is ironic because that is their job. When Lyft first came out, my SO and I lived DC and decided to give it a shot to get from our home near RFK stadium to meet some friends for dinner downtown. Right after picking us up, the driver rear-ended a late model E Class at the first traffic light. The E-Class driver didn’t see any damage (it was at a very low speed) and wanted to get on with their day so he let our driver continue on. Our driver then proceeded to drive 5-10 miles under the speed limit on 295, 695, and 395 while also driving in three lanes at one time and being completely oblivious to other traffic. After nearly side-swiping several cars and taking 30 minutes to complete a 15 minute trip, we decided to get out as soon as the highway turned into a city street with sidewalks.
The driver was completely sober albeit on the older side and really should not have been allowed to drive on the road. They were actually trying to drive but had no control over the vehicle nor awareness of their surroundings and were an extreme danger to themselves and others on the road. I relayed this information to Lyft along with a one star rating and recommended the driver’s app privileges be revoked. I am sure nothing came of it and that driver is still terrorizing DC’s streets (assuming they have not perished in a horrible collision).
My worst taxi story wasn’t my own taxi but a taxi that was stranded in front of my driveway when I got back from work with a flat tire and a car full of French people trying to get to EWR for a flight home. One of the tourists flagged me over and apparently the taxi driver had no idea how to jack up the car and install a spare. I helped him find the necessary gear in his trunk which was full of random crap and showed him how to loosen the bolts and safely jack up the car under the jack point. He continued to go underneath of the car despite my warnings not to and also did some other things that were unsafe. I got a bit fed up after my safety tips and warnings were ignored several times and when one of the tourists asked me to call them an uber on my phone, I got fed up and declined and told them I had to go home to my wife and newborn child (this was true). Mind you, I had already been helping them for 30 minutes after a long day of work.
Submitted by: oddseth
I personally don’t have a good enough story to share, but my wife had a pretty terrible cab ride once. She decided to take a cab home instead of public transportation to our apartment since it was getting late and it was cold. What happened next was a cab ride from a driver that must have learned how to drive from playing too many games of Crazy Taxi in the arcade. He speed, didn’t stop at stop signs, didn’t yield to oncoming traffic, etc. His driving was so erratic that the cops pulled him over which never happens. The police wrote him a ticket for a variety of moving violations and then gave my wife a ride home for the last mile to our apartment.
Submitted by: BloggyMcBlogBlog
Chicago - I was attending a conference and we were heading to a dinner after the conference ended for the day.
Our taxi driver was driving through downtown like Mario Andretti - drove about 50 mph on the streets, going through red lights without even slowing down. At one point he felt the traffic wasn’t moving fast enough, so he decided to drive on the sidewalk for about a block, forcing people to jump out of the way. When merging back onto the street, he gave another driver the finger and said some nasty words in Hungarian. One colleague with me who could speak Hungarian said “you don’t want to know what he said”. We did make it to the dinner but one colleague was so shaken up that he just walked back to the hotel instead. I couldn’t blame him.
Submitted by: QADude
Former cab driver and I have more stories than you can shake a stick at... One of the worst was having a rider step out of my cab in a supermarket parking lot in broad daylight and start shooting at some guy putting his cart away. The guy returned fire and I high-tailed it out of there while hitting the hidden panic button in the car (this was before smartphones). Car had a few new speed holes after that day.
Pretty much anything you think may have happened to cab drivers did, taxicab confessions was real(ish)
Submitted by: JeffCronin
Not so much a horror story, but these are the things I’ve experienced a few times that drive me up a wall.
1) Heavy fragrances - I have nothing against Little Trees, but when the interior smells like an overturned 18 wheeler full of perfume, I just can’t deal.
2) Smoking - I just read that only 8 to 11% of Americans still smoke. That’s their choice. However, if you’re a rideshare driver, your car is your office. It is unacceptable to subject 90% of your riders to the stench of your rolling ashtray and smoke trap.
3) Driver’s family/friends - On more than one occasion I was picked up where there were more than one person in the vehicle. I am not talking about UberPool or similar, where you share with other riders. No, on several occasions I got into a car were there was a passenger, a friend of the driver in the front seat. On one occasion, I got into the car where it looks like a driver, his wife, and child had just finished their weekly grocery run before picking me up
Submitted by: PrinceGnarls