Im beginning a summer coarse in one week. My college is 8 miles away which is pretty much nothing. On freeway its about 10 minutes without traffic, and on the street its about half an hour. I don’t know how to drive yet and by bus its at least one hour. Im thinking about taking Uber to and from school but I’m a bit nervous about it. Ive heard some pretty scary stories about Uber drivers doing bad things to their passengers. My question is: how many of you take Uber to college? have you ever had any bad experiences? do you think its safe?
It is safe. My adult kids have been using it sine college. I take it all the time, especially when I am traveling for work. Those cars are tracked and you can see it on your app to see which route they are taking you and you can also share it with someone.
Uber is safe, but would be expensive if you used it everyday.
It’s pretty safe. When I take it at night sometimes I send a screenshot of my ride information to a friend just in case. It is fairly expensive though so I’m not sure if it’s the best option for you.
Yeah I’m now realizing how it would get expensive. I actually found a bus route where i only take one bus to school and it takes 45 mins. Im only using the bus for my summer coarse. Thank you all for the advice!
Are you in an area where it is safe to ride a bicycle? Eight miles isn’t very far on a bicycle.
I know some car-less people who combine using the bus and Uber. They take a bus as far as it goes, then Uber the rest of the way.
Personally I like Lyft better. They seem to filter out bad/scary drivers better.
You can always share your uber trip via Facebook message, text, whatsapp, whatever messaging app you have and the other person can sit there and watch the trip as it unfolds.
I’ve just heard so many scary stories regarding Uber which is why I’m iffy about it
Then use Lyft
I don’t think there are any physical risks but there is always the chance that Uber/Lyft/whatever doesn’t show up or doesn’t have someone available. It’s not reliable. Plus that would add up REALLY quickly.
You only ever really hear about the scary stories - uneventful rides don’t exactly make for exciting articles. I’ve been using uber and lyft for over three years and have never had a problem or feared for my safety. Every once in a while a driver will be late or a bit standoffish or something, but that’s the worst I’ve experienced.
Echoing other posters, round trip uber/lyft will add up quickly. They may be cheaper than a tacmxi service, but they’re still not cheap.
I live about 8 to 9 miles away from USC and relied on Uber. For this reason, I thought it would be better to save money and just stay with my family instead of spending 5K or so on housing per semester. The Uber rides did add up and since Los Angeles is infamous for its traffic, I have a few stories.
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It was about 4PM and I was absolutely exhausted after my CS lab had ended. This was summer 2016, so USC was considerably less crowded than during a regular semester. The driver saw where I was headed and kicked me out of her car saying that I lived much too far and that she wanted to be done for the day. I found this odd because if she was ready to clock out, why risk another ride?
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Another driver saw where I was headed and claimed that his tires were bad, so he didn’t trust his car to drive on the freeway. This seemed like a terrible excuse if he didn’t want to put up with 8 miles of potentially heavy traffic. I reported him immediately because if he wasn’t lying, he could be putting people in danger.
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I had an older male driver say that he picks up a lot of drunk white girls from campus. He said “I’m an Uber driver, so you know, I can’t do anything. It’s nice to look though”. This was very awkward - even more so because I’m gay and had no idea how to react.
Overall, I used Uber for my junior and senior years (I was a transfer student to USC). 90% of the time, I had no issues. The other 10%, however, was bad enough that it’s hard for me to forget those rides/drivers.