My Broken Leg and Uber Observations
Some of you may know. Mostly don’t. But on a beautiful Sunday October day after the Jets beat Green Bay Packers, I broke my ankle in 3 places playing soccer. It was a freak accident. What did this mean? Well, I couldn’t walk for 10 weeks. I couldn’t drive for 10 weeks. How could I work? Luckily my boss at Harbor Consultants was very understanding and as he said since Covid if you have the capability you can work from home. I am very thankful for this understanding and with the technology that I could work from home. Otherwise, I would have been disability collecting half of my salary. With the broken leg and the inability to drive what did this lead to? Uber rides. And let me say how thankful I am for Uber. But during these times in my backseat of an Uber car there have been several observations I made. Let me digest them here.
Technology is great and there is an abundance of Uber drivers. This is the first thing I learned. Never relying on Uber’s and living in the midburb of Cranford there are a lot of Uber drivers out there! I assumed it would take 15-20 mins every time I requested a car to arrive at my doorstep. In the city, yes, I can totally understand the 1 - 5-minute wait. But in Cranford, 1 - 5 minutes for an Uber ride. That’s not going to happen I thought. But it did. Every time I requested a ride in Cranford it was less than a five-minute wait. Yes, I know certain times in the day matter about the wait time, but in general the uber requests were 8-9am in the morning on weekdays to my doctor in Florham Park. That’s rush hour time. As my Uber driver drove to Florham Park with my knee rover in the trunk, I thought yes I may be able to get to the doctor’s office in Florham Park with Doctor Adams but how the heck am I going to get home from Florham Park to Cranford. Will I really be stranded out in the outer ring of the suburbs? Well, the answer is no and goes back to my first point. There are a lot of Uber drivers out there. In the Summit Medical facility somewhere in Florham Park, I never waited more than 10 minutes for an Uber driver to take me home to Cranford. As I mentioned two times before, there are a lot of Uber drivers in NJ.
So, with the number of Uber rides as an urban planner who is always inquisitive and observant, I made some observations. I cannot be much of a conversationalist unless I have a couple of Ipas in me and if the driver starts the conversations, but during my rides in the back of an Uber I had some very interesting observations and conversations.
First, most of the Uber drivers were Latino. Second, there were many women drivers. Many of the Uber drivers' English was not their primary language. How can I assume this? Well, their phone and directions were in Spanish. These are some of my observations and conversations. One of the first of my rides was a Latina woman driver. I got in the car and off we went. Immediately I started to notice things. She was listening in Spanish to questions. I can speak some Spanish, so I listened intently. The first question I heard was “what is the capital of the United States”. The second question was “how many senators are there”? I thought these questions were interesting, and why is she listening to this? Then something came to mind. Is she studying for her citizenship? This could be the reason. I asked her “estas estudiando para tu ciudadania”? She quickly replied yes. I thought this was great. An immigrant who is making a living driving an Uber was at the same time studying for her citizenship. This is the American dream. As she dropped me off, I said to her in English, “good luck on your test”. She said thank you and off she went. I really hope she passes her test and becomes a citizen of our great country.
Other observations were a driver who engaged in conversation with me. He asked what happened to me and felt some remorse. As he continued to converse, he mentioned that he got laid off and needed to pivot and became an Uber driver. He said it’s been great, giving me more time to be with my family and making a decent living. I thought this was important. We need our time with our family and was happy for him. Another driver picked me up and she quickly said this was my last drive for the day. I said that’s good. She said I just worked a long day. I asked her what she does and said she is a pre-school teacher and does this to make extra money. I said this is good, Uber creates an opportunity to make extra income. Other drivers that picked me up were a Korean driver who didn’t speak much English, and a driver from Spain who told me he didn’t speak much English as well. Then there was an Arabic driver who when driving his phone started ringing which was labeled “wife” on the phone. He started conversing with her in Arabic.
Other observations were that there was only one hybrid car during my multitude of rides. As Uber drivers put on their mileage on their cars and with gas pricing, I thought there would be more hybrid cars or even electric. But no. This was of a minor concern as these drivers use a lot of gas and this isn’t good for our environment. Picking me up takes one car off the road, but still I wish there were more hybrids and potentially electric cars.
I also began to think how much Uber takes from these fares. From a Google search it says that Uber takes 25% of each fare. That’s a lot and with all the Uber rides out there, Uber is definitely making money. My average ride to Florham Park from Cranford was $50. 25% of this is $12.50, so the net of this ride is $37.50. Factor in gas then the net is approximately $34. Still for a half hour drive, netting $34 is very good.
Luckily, I got through this ordeal and am driving again and back to the office after 10 weeks at home. But because of my broken leg it provided an interesting perspective from the backseat of an Uber and the drivers that make the company work.