Uber promotes the speed in which you can hail a ride using their one tap to ride feature on the uber.com app.. Lyft says with just one tap, get matched with a friendly, background-checked driver and that sounds assuring as mentioned on their website. Every driver is screened for criminal offenses. The criminal background check goes back seven years and includes national and county-level databases, as well as national sex offender registries. That is important but it is still a stranger picking you up in their car. Most ride-sharing companies have policies on screening each drivers driving record at the DMV. They automatically disqualify an applicant for major violations in the past three years (e.g. driving on a suspended license, reckless driving) but allow anyone who has no more than three moving violations in the past three years (e.g. accidents, traffic light violations) This means your ride-sharing driver could have been cited for traffic violations or been involved in as many as three accidents before picking you and or your family up to drive you where you want to go. No guarantee that your driver is anywhere close to being a 5 Star Driver. A serious consideration is that the criminal background check is done on a new drivers initial hiring, never to be re addressed again. The same is true for a driving instructor of which is my profession, the license renewal process is every three years and requires a written test, a physical and the paying of fees. The criminal background check and a printout of the instructors D.M.V. driving record is never asked for again.

Too many drivers speed and tailgate and your Uber or Lyft driver could be one of them. This is a major cause of the majority of rear end collisions and a sign of a 1, 2,3 star driver. Does your Uber driver use their signals on a regular basis because as a licensed driving instructor who is in traffic six hours a day my informal survey observes that 2 out of 10 drivers do anymore. It is important that the stranger people get into a car with for a lift somewhere is a decent human being but also a qualified driver. The 5StarDriver.com video driver training program was developed to raise the standard of drivers in all lines of work and in every household. The sad irony is that drivers are worse than ever while cars are safer than ever.

The rating system with the ride-sharing services rates punctuality of the driver, cleanliness of the car and professionalism. This is done after the ride has been given which is much too late if a wreck was to happen or the person wasn’t a decent human being. The drivers also have a rating system for their passenger’s, one through five stars. A car is rated for its crash survivability rating 5 star being the best. So all this rating of people and automobiles is well and good but cars are crashing at an alarming rate because the true skill level of the individual drivers is not taken seriously. The 5 Star Driver video series is to show parents and their young drivers before they get jaded and sloppy how true skilled and proper defensive driving is implemented. Instead of needing a crash proof car or someday a car that drives itself. Our driving protocol in America has been so dumbed down that it is time for us as a collective to train better drivers as a whole whether they be your next lift across town or not.