Uber, the designated driver of the iPhone generation, thinks intoxicated adult passengers are a lot like restless kids: both can be pacified with a game.
The on-demand ride app has been conducting an experiment in the North Carolina city of Charlotte in which drivers leave a Bop It – a noisy children’s sound game based around a plastic toy – in the back seat during rides.
The goal is that riders who overindulged that evening will become so engrossed that they forget to pester the driver.
Bop It, first released in the 1990s, is certainly engrossing. It consists of a stick or handle that is littered with buttons, knobs and cranks, and a pre-recorded voice tells users when a button should be bopped, a crank should twisted and a knob should be pulled. This goes on increasingly fast until the player screws up.
“An intoxicated rider who is engaged in something interesting is less likely to be irritable and aiming aggression at the driver,” said Joe Sullivan, Uber’s chief security officer and a veteran of Facebook, PayPal and the US attorney’s office in northern California.
Drunken passenger assaults on Uber drivers have become one of the profession’s main risks. The internet is littered with videos of such incidents and drivers often take to online message boards to vent about the phenomenon. Last fall, a California Uber driver sued a passenger for beating him up as he exited the vehicle. The passenger then countersued the driver for publicly shaming him with a secretly recorded video of the incident.
If Uber is going to keep growing its fleet and hold competition from other ride-hailing apps such as Lyft, it needs to keep drivers happy. And getting rid of the drunken passengers isn’t really an option. In fact, giving people a sober ride home is one of Uber’s selling points to consumers.
On Uber’s website, the company advertises its efforts with Mothers Against Drunk Driving to get the over-served to use the service.
The Bop Its are one of Uber’s recent attempts to influence what goes on in its fleet, which is made up entirely of freelance contractors who use its app.
In Seattle, Uber has been getting some riders to install passenger-facing mirrors in their backseats. Studies have suggested people are more likely to self-moderate their behavior if they see their reflection, the company says.
