More than just Driver Car Issues and Harassments, Driver Social Problems abound.
A more subtle and under-tracked issue in the matter of AV versus Human drivers is the one of more general social interaction between drivers and passengers.
More than a few times a Human driver of a gig service and a traditional service sees their rider as social opportunity. Nice when the driver recognizes when their customer wants to interact. But can become a problem when either the driver or the passenger when the topic has changed. Or the conversation has ended.
The problem has become greater over time too. In the begging of gig riding my experience with drivers interactions tended to be more of a professional nature. Today many more of the drivers think a benefit of their time on shift with Uber and Lyft is the social interaction. To the point they don't really recognize that invisible separation of the self-employed contractor and their customer. I get it that some of the driver's main form of income might be one inside only a lonely home office. Or a hard physical job without much companionship. A lot of drivers have relayed as much to me during the ride.
I am happy and interested to listen to some of those one-way conversations. Or even participate in the two-way conversations. Just so long as the driver realizes their conversation and the topics discussed are welcome and timely..
But too many times the drivers don't know out to manage a drive and conversation. Their enthusiasm, boredom, or lack of understating conversational and social cue kill the conversation dead on the spot. But the keep on talkin till the end of the ride forces then end of their talk. The death of the conversation and the ride come with lasting effects that related to rider enthusiasm used to hail the ride. And those effects could easily lead to the faster adoption of a preference of autonomously controlled vehicle rides over human piloted rides.
If ever a customer ever became lonely during an AV ride they could always use a phone to strike up a conversation with person. An AV ride service might even get smart about that kind of rider aspect. Offering a feature to activate either a "Ride Bartender" who is either human, or AI, to provide some diversion during a trip. With the feature being integrated into the vehicle so the customer does not have to use their mobile data or phone's batter during the ride. Possibly a good way to improve customer loyalty and retention for the service.
There are other non-harassments, but still socially impactful ways an AV service can win out over human pilots that I have not mentioned. All of those will (and are) have a longer term impact during the general migration from human to AV piloted ride hailing services.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
