A passenger gets assaulted, epic robotaxi fail and Uber pays $15M. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

A rideshare passenger was assaulted in Chicago. CBS News reported:

According to Chicago police, the 29-year-old woman was assaulted in the 800 block of West Superior Street, just west of Halsted Street and close to the Bally's Chicago casino construction site, around 2:30 a.m.

Police sources said the suspected the victim was a rideshare passenger. She was taken to St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital for an evaluation.

The driver of the gray Toyota Prius in which the woman had been a passenger tried to pull away and flee, but he struck a pole and was taken into police custody, police said.

“Ultimately, we want to make sure that people to have the tools necessary to arm themselves with safe practices anytime that they use a rideshare,” said Bryant Greening of Legal Rideshare, the first firm in the U.S. entirely dedicated to Uber, Lyft and other rideshare-related accident and injury claims.

“If something feels off about the ride, don't get in the car. If during the ride, something goes wrong, contact the police or contact a loved one right away,” Bryant said. “Those senses we have that something seems slightly off? They're usually right.”

Tesla's robotaxi has an epic fail. The Street reported.

Frank Downing and Sam Korus, two of Ark's research directors, filmed themselves taking a field trip (or a “real world use case,” as Korus puts it) in the Robotaxi in Austin.

Our Ark hero Frank Downing gets into a third Robotaxi (it's easy to keep track, since the safety monitor keeps changing), and that's when the trouble starts.

The autonomous vehicle pulls into the left turning lane on a two-way street before it glitches and starts jerking aggressively, as if it didn't know what to do next.

The video is edited after that, but from what can be gathered, the safety monitor turns on the hazard lights and calls for live support, as Tesla Robotaxis are designed for remote supervision.

The vehicle is stuck in the left turning lane despite being otherwise fully operational, as the passenger and monitor wait for tech support.

Uber Eats pays up. King5 reported:

The company will pay $14,991,841.49 in back pay, interest, damages and civil penalties to 16,120 affected workers by Sept. 1 as part of the settlement, which was reached July 18. It will also pay the city of Seattle $33,680.26 in fines.

The first investigation found Uber Eats violated the city's Independent Contractor Protections law. A worker complained about the company's Boost promotion, where Uber Eats advertised Boost earnings multipliers during busy times and locations. It said workers could multiply their base fare by a specific number on a map and add earnings to delivery fares. However, the OLS investigation found Uber Eats didn't disclose that the Boost multiplier only applied to part of the worker's fare and that the dollar amount shown already included contributions from the promotion.

The investigation also found Uber Eats paid workers less than the amount shown on pre-work offer cards.

The majority of the settlement — more than $13 million — was related to alleged violations of the Independent Contractor Protections law.

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, robotaxis, Waymo, and gig worker accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.

People wait for bots, trash-talking Tesla and delivery drivers get targeted. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Riders are canceling rides with human drivers. Business Insider reported:

Waymo founder has a message for Tesla: “What robotaxi?”. Electrek reported:

Immigrant delivery drivers are being targeted. NBC News reported:

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, robotaxis, Waymo, and gig worker accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.

We chat with Attorney Bryant Greening about accidents, injuries and everything you need to know. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Lyft gets a bus, Uber loses in court and workers get targeted. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Lyft gets autonomous shuttles. TechCrunch reported:

Lyft will add autonomous shuttles made by Austrian manufacturer Benteler Group to its network in late 2026, the company announced Friday. The shuttles will be deployed in partnership with U.S. cities and airports, according to Lyft, but could expand out from there if things go well.

The partnership will let Lyft use urban electric shuttles made by Benteler's mobility division under the Holon brand. The shuttles will not have a steering wheel or pedals and will feature inward-facing seats for up to nine seated and six standing passengers, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the Benteler partnership on Friday.

Uber loses in UK court. Reuters reported:

Uber's rival taxi operators in England and Wales will not face a 20% VAT charge on their profit margins outside of London after the ride-hailing firm lost its appeal on Tuesday against a previous ruling.

Uber had sought a declaration that rival private-hire taxi operators enter into a contract with passengers, meaning operators must charge a 20% value added tax (VAT) outside London as Uber is required to do.

Uber then brought an appeal to the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday unanimously dismissed the appeal, ruling that operators are not required to enter into a contract with passengers.

Uber says their immigrant workers are getting singled out. Bloomberg reported:

Uber Technologies Inc. is pushing back on a new NYC proposal requiring delivery app workers to display company-issued identification numbers on reflective vests, saying it “singles out” immigrant workers for “heightened surveillance and control.”

The new rules, proposed Monday by Mayor Eric Adams in the name of worker safety, would mandate that companies like Uber and DoorDash Inc. issue identification cards containing a unique number alongside the name and photo of each courier. They would be required to produce it upon demand of a police officer or others “authorized by law.”

The new requirements would expose its delivery couriers, which includes 35,000 immigrant workers, “to police scrutiny — even in the absence of any violation,” said Josh Gold, an Uber spokesperson, who added that the administration did not engage with the company on the proposal. The company will engage on the rules moving forward, he said.

LA drivers targeted, Uber partners with Lucid and they're coming for your apps. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Uber Eats drivers in LA are getting robbed. ABC7 reported:

Uber is expanding its robotaxi partners. Bloomberg reported:

Uber is coming for your driver apps. Business Insider reported:

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, robotaxis, Waymo, and gig worker accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.

Robot deliveries, Waymo arrives in Philly and teens get accounts. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Robots are delivering your food. New York Post adds:

Uber has partnered with Avride to bring autonomous robots to the streets.
These delivery robots are about the size of a carry-on suitcase and can move along sidewalks at speeds of up to five miles per hour.

Each robot carries up to 55 pounds of food or drinks, including large pizza orders and bottles.

With features like LIDAR, cameras, and ultrasonic sensors, the robots can detect obstacles from 200 feet away.

They recognize traffic lights and navigate crowded sidewalks with ease.

These robots work around the clock. Rain or shine, they keep moving.

Right now, Uber Eats robot delivery is live in multiple US cities.

Austin, Texas, was the first to launch the sidewalk robot program and Dallas is next.

In New Jersey, Jersey City has already rolled out the robots in neighborhoods like Hamilton Park, Historic Downtown, and the Waterfront. Some cities in Ohio are also part of the program.

Uber and Avride plan to deploy hundreds of delivery robots by the end of 2025.

Waymo is heading to Philly. Yahoo! Finance reported:

Waymo kicked off two “road trips” to Philadelphia and New York City on Monday, signaling the Alphabet-owned company's interest in expanding into Northeastern cities.

For its Philadelphia trip, Waymo plans to place vehicles in the most complex parts of the city, including downtown and on freeways, according to a spokesperson. She noted folks will see Waymo vehicles driving “at all hours throughout various Philadelphia neighborhoods, from North Central to Eastwick, University City, and as far east as the Delaware River.”

In NYC, Waymo will drive its cars manually in Manhattan just north of Central Park down to The Battery and parts of Downtown Brooklyn. The company will also map parts of Jersey City and Hoboken in New Jersey.

Waymo offers teen accounts. Bloomberg reported:

Teens from 14 to 17 can have a user profile paired to a parent's account starting on Tuesday, the company said in a statement. The program will initially be available where Waymo's vehicles operate in the Metro Phoenix area. The company intends to expand teen service to other cities.

Waymo said it will have specially trained support agents available to assist teens during rides and will loop in parents during trips if needed. Parents can also track the real-time status of a trip if the teen rider opted to share it. That's a different approach compared to Uber Technologies Inc., which allows parents to be automatically notified when teens hail a ride and check trip progress at any time.

Waymo has long touted peer-reviewed research that suggests its driverless technology is better than humans at avoiding car crashes. But isolated accidents have occurred in the past — including the death of a dog — where Waymo has had to review its technology or recall its vehicles.

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, robotaxis, Waymo, and gig worker accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.

New pricing punishes drivers, Tesla's bumpy start and Travis returns. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Uber's new dynamic pricing is hurting drivers. The Guardian reported:

Research by academics at New York's Columbia Business School concluded that the Silicon Valley company had implemented “algorithmic price discrimination” that had raised “rider fares and cut driver pay on billions of … trips, systematically, selectively, and opaquely”.

The Columbia paper, which focused on 24,532 trips made by a single US Uber driver, concluded that the introduction of the new algorithm had allowed Uber to “significantly increase its take rate — the per cent of rider fares net of driver pay captured by the company — from about 32% at the start of upfront pricing to upwards of 42% by the end of 2024”.

Last week's University of Oxford research found that, since the launch of dynamic pricing, Uber's median take rate per UK driver had “increased from 25% to 29%, and on some trips … is over 50%”.

Telsa's robotaxis are off to a bumpy start. The Verge reported:

Some are relatively minor, like failing to recognize a reversing UPS truck while trying to pull into a parking space or driving over a curb. Others are more worrisome, like briefly driving on the wrong side of the road or dropping passengers off in the middle of a busy intersection.

Several incidents involve “phantom braking,” in which the vehicle stops suddenly for seemingly no reason. Tesla's camera-only perception system has long had problems with phantom braking, appearing to misinterpret shadows, road marking, or other environmental factors, which triggers the vehicle's automatic emergency braking. The Reddit list includes three incidents of phantom braking.

But the above list suggests that not everyone's experience was so seamless. Also, the only way we know about any of these incidents is because robotaxi customers are documenting their rides and posting them on social media. Texas doesn't require any incident reporting or data sharing from Tesla — though the state did recently approve a new permitting system that could prove to be more difficult for the company to navigate. One provision allows state regulators to revoke permits if a company's autonomous vehicles are deemed a safety risk.

Keep in mind, these are the incidents that cropped up among a small fleet of 10–20 vehicles in just three days of semi-public availability. Musk has said he wants thousands of vehicles on the road within months, and perhaps “a million” by the end of next year. Imagine what the list looks like at that point.

Travis returns to Uber…sorta. NY Times reported:

Uber is in talks with Travis Kalanick, the ride-hailing company's co-founder who was ousted in a boardroom coup eight years ago this month, to help fund his acquisition of the U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese autonomous vehicle company, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The company, Pony.ai, was founded in Silicon Valley in 2016 but has its main presence in China, and has permits to operate robot taxis and trucks in the United States and China.

The talks are preliminary, said the people, who were not authorized to speak about the confidential conversations. Mr. Kalanick will run Pony if the deal is completed, they said. It is unclear what role, if any, Uber would take in Pony as an investor.

If the deal goes through, Mr. Kalanick, 48, will remain in his day job running CloudKitchens, a virtual restaurant start-up that he founded after leaving Uber in 2017. He would also work more closely with Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over as Uber's chief executive after Mr. Kalanick's ouster.

Uber makes a bus, a new ordinance in Chicago and Waymos costs more. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Uber invented a bus. Gizmodo reported:

The ride-hailing company recently announced Route Share, in which shuttles will travel dozens of fixed routes, with fixed stops, picking up passengers and dropping them off at fixed times. Amid the inevitable jokes about Silicon Valley once again discovering buses are serious questions about what this will mean for struggling transit systems, air quality, and congestion.

But Kevin Shen, who studies this sort of thing at the Union of Concerned Scientists, questions whether Uber's “next-gen bus” will do much for commuters or the climate. “Everybody will say, ‘Silicon Valley's reinventing the bus again,'” Shen said. “But it's more like they're reinventing a worse bus.”

Meanwhile, the federal government is cutting support for public services, including transit systems — many of which still haven't fully recovered from COVID-era budget crunches. Though ridership nationwide is up to 85 percent of pre-pandemic levels, Bloomberg News recently estimated that transit systems across the country face a $6 billion budget shortfall. So it's easy to see why companies like Uber see a business opportunity in public transit.

A new Chicago ordinance is up for debate. Chicago Tribune reported:

Rodriguez's ordinance would raise driver pay during rides to $1.50 per mile and 62.5 cents per minute in July 2026. It would also establish a $7 minimum driver payout for each trip.

The City Council's Workforce Development Committee, chaired by Rodriguez, is set to discuss and vote on the measure Thursday. If it passes, it could face a final vote from all aldermen next week.

In addition to pay raises, Rodriguez's ordinance would require fare breakdowns be shared with both riders and drivers. It would also add driver safety measures — like requiring passenger identities to be verified — and would reconfigure the driver disciplinary process by giving drivers a seven-day notice ahead of suspensions and details explaining why they have been deactivated.

Both Uber and Lyft blasted the potential forced pay hike Monday. Lyft spokesperson CJ Macklin likened the ordinance to laws in New York City that have “forced thousands of drivers out of the app for hours at a time.”

Waymos cost more than Uber or Lyft and riders are fine with it. TechCrunch reported:

Obi, an app that aggregates real-time pricing and pick-up times across multiple ride-hailing services, has just published what it's calling the “first in-depth examination of Waymo's pricing strategy.” The company found Waymo's self-driving car rides to be consistently more expensive than comparative offerings from Uber and Lyft — and it doesn't seem to matter.

The report, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, is based on a month's worth of data collected between March 25 and April 25 in San Francisco, California. Obi pulled nearly 90,000 “offer records” from Waymo, Lyft's “standard” offering, and UberX in order to compare price and ETA. It then compared ride requests from the same times and routes. Obi found Lyft offered the lowest average price at $14.44. Uber was next at $15.58. Waymo's average price across the month's worth of data was $20.43.

The company found that 70% of users who had taken a Waymo ride said they preferred a driverless car to a traditional rideshare or taxi.

Despite that enthusiasm, Obi found that safety is still a big concern for riders. Of those surveyed, 74% said safety is their biggest concern about robotaxis. Nearly 70% of respondents said they think there should be some form of remote human monitoring of the rides (something that is already a common practice).

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, robotaxis, gig workers, delivery and e-scooter accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.

Lyft gets cheaper, Tesla goes rental and Chicago cracks down. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Lyft is bringing back shared rides. Bloomberg reported:

Lyft Inc. is bringing back cheaper shared trips at airports, reversing a decision made two years ago to discontinue the ride option as it seeks to compete with rival Uber Technologies Inc. in courting inflation-weary consumers.

Lyft is currently piloting shared rides at eight US airports, including Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with those trips receiving as much as a 20% discount compared with a regular Lyft, said company spokesperson Jill Gonzalez, confirming an inquiry from Bloomberg News. Two passengers at those airports going in a similar direction can be picked up in the same car, according to a screenshot posted by a driver on the social media site X.

Lyft and Uber have been introducing affordability-focused product updates to respond to worsening consumer sentiment, which has soured on concerns about the broader economy. A Gridwise report in February showed that a majority of customers would curb or cut out ride-hails if Uber and Lyft prices in the US increased further beyond a 7.2% jump in 2024.

Elon Musk says there's no need to buy Uber. Business Insider reported:

Musk told CNBC that he envisions a world where, instead of calling an Uber, you can call an autonomous Tesla to get you to your destination without a dedicated driver.

Musk's proposed business model would allow Tesla drivers to rent out their cars for autonomous ride-hailing, “just like” one can rent out a spare bedroom through Airbnb.

Representatives for Tesla and Uber did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Tesla has not yet unveiled the commercial version of its Full Self-Driving software, called FSD Unsupervised. This software will be used in its robotaxi fleet and does not require a driver behind the wheel like its personal vehicles.

When asked by Faber whether Tesla needed to make any improvements or changes to its technology or fleet in order to prepare to launch a large-scale robotaxi service, Musk demurred.

“I don't think we're missing anything,” Musk said. “Tesla has all the ingredients necessary to offer a vast self-driving fleet.”

After the ongoing issue with Uber's congestion fees, the city and organizations are fighting back. Block Club Chicago reported:

Backlash to Uber overcharging customers a city congestion fee has revived local and state efforts to regulate the rideshare industry.

A state bill requiring companies to provide an itemized list of fees before a purchase — or include it in the total advertised price — sailed through the Senate and a key House of Representatives committee Tuesday. And on Wednesday, a City Council member pledged to hold a hearing into Uber's overcharging of the city's Downtown congestion fee — while rideshare drivers rallied for more workplace protections.

The state bill stalled previously as lawsuits with food delivery apps were settled over hidden fees. But Block Club's reporting on Uber wrongfully charging the city's $1.50 per ride Downtown “congestion” surcharge outside of permitted hours has convinced more lawmakers to support the bill this time around, said Rep. Bob Morgan, its chief sponsor in the House. It is now heading to a full floor vote in the House.

Uber admitted in April it had errantly applied the congestion surcharge on rides to and from Downtown taken outside the city-permitted surcharge hours of 6 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. Uber began refunding customers earlier this month, but the company still won't say how much is owed to Chicagoans in total.

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, robotaxis, gig workers, delivery and e-scooter accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.

Waymo recalls cars, GigU comes to America and Tesla falls behind. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

Waymo recalls more than 1200 vehicles after minor collisions. Reuters reported:

Waymo is recalling more than 1,200 self-driving vehicles to update software and address risks of collisions with chains, gates and other roadway barriers after U.S. auto safety investigators opened a probe last year.

The recall affects 1,212 Waymo vehicles operating on the company's fifth-generation automated driving system software, the company said.

Waymo said it was aware of 16 collisions with chains, gates and other barriers between 2022 and late 2024. But the incidents did not result in any injuries, according to a report filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

NHTSA opened an investigation into the performance of Waymo self-driving vehicles in May 2024 after reports of its robotaxis exhibiting driving behavior that potentially violated traffic safety laws.

The agency said several incidents under investigation “involved collisions with clearly visible objects that a competent driver would be expected to avoid.” The investigation remains open.

GigU, an app to help drivers make more money comes to America. Business Insider reported:

An app launching in the US on Wednesday has drawn ire from Uber in the past after helping gig workers answer a key question: Which rides and deliveries make the most financial sense to take?

GigU uses information that independent contractors see on-screen when they are offered a gig to calculate an estimate of how much the worker will earn per mile and at an hourly rate.

The feature, which GigU calls the “cherry picker,” is designed to help drivers and delivery workers accept or reject a job within the seconds-long window that most apps give them, its founders say. The app works with only Android phones for now.

In GigU, users can set specific ranges for pay and, for ride-hailing gigs, passenger ratings. Based on those settings, GigU assigns a color to orders or rides as they pop up on screen: Green for a job that would be the most lucrative for the driver, yellow for options with earnings that mostly fall between the ranges that users set, and red for a job that doesn't meet their goals.

An Uber spokesperson said that “using automation tools, apps, or bots to manipulate the Uber app or access Uber data in any way isn't allowed” per its community guidelines and terms of service. Uber is still “engaged on the legal front in Brazil” with GigU and StopClub, the spokesperson added.

GigU's founders say that their app merely takes information that the gig worker already sees and presents it in a more analytical context. From there, it's up to the gig worker to make a choice, they said.

Tesla's robotaxi service is falling behind. Futurism reported:

As The Information reports, the company is already woefully behind schedule and hasn't even started testing its autonomous vehicles without a safety driver as of April.

And the company is quickly running out of time. Musk promised that Tesla would launch an autonomous ride-hailing service in Austin in a matter of weeks — a characteristically overly ambitious promise.

The Texas Department of Public Safety hasn't even received a plan for what would happen in case of an emergency from Tesla.

As The Information points out, it took Waymo a decade to complete detailed maps of each city to allow its fleet of fully autonomous vehicles to roam the streets safely. It took months of having a human safety driver behind the wheel before its operation could go fully driverless.

Tesla has chosen a completely different approach, relying on its loyal customers to accumulate driving data. A Tesla engineer told The Information that the carmaker is struggling with “mundane operational problems,” like getting cars unstuck and providing customer service.

Experts have also raised safety concerns about Tesla's decision to exclusively rely on cameras, unlike its competitors, like Waymo, which rely on more precise sensors, like radar and LIDAR.

LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, robotaxis, gig workers, delivery and e-scooter accidents and injuries. Consultations are always free.