Uber Hopes a '90s Toy Will Distract Drunk Riders From Beating Up Drivers
Drunk people are the worst for Uber drivers. They're loud and often obnoxious; they can control the music; they might puke; and, terrifyingly, they might beat the hell out of a driver and then file a lawsuit. In November, a video of a 32-year-old Taco Bell executive beating up an Uber driver in San Francisco went viral, leading to the executive's dismal. He's now suing the Uber driver for $5 million saying the incident was illegally recorded.
But drunkards are big business. Just ask cab drivers. So how do you mitigate the risks they pose? Maybe it's as simple as giving them a child's toy. Uber, according to the Guardian, is putting Bop It toys in the back seat of its drivers' cars in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of an experiment to see if they distract drunken passengers.
"An intoxicated rider who is engaged in something interesting is less likely to be irritable and aiming aggression at the driver," Joe Sullivan, Uber's chief security officer, told the Guardian.
Bop It, first introduced in 1996, is basically a suped-up '90s version of Simon. A voice instructs the player to bop a button, pull a knob, or turn a crank, and it gets faster and faster as the game progresses. And yeah, it is pretty engrossing. Let's hear it for infantilizing drunk adults.
