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For frequent travelers or city dwellers, you know that hopping in a cab and moving from destination to destination can rack up quite a toll on your finances. Thankfully, there are new services that look to improve upon this experience, saving your wallet whenever visiting, or simply traveling through the city.
Brought to from the guys at Zimride who introduced social ride sharing to the world, Lyft is an all new service brings easy to find, on-demand drivers to you, via the push of a button. But unlike Uber’s suited up drivers who pick you up in black town cars and charge a flat rate of $40, Lyft drivers are just everyday folk (who passed extensive background checks) and will take you wherever you wanna go, for a suggested donation (typically 80% less than cab fare). Because both drivers and passengers are rated by each other, donate poorly and chances are you’ll have a tough time finding another Lyft driver in the future.
Lyft launched as a beta around 2 months ago and since then, it’s grown to more than 100 drivers (with plans to offer 200) offering easy lifts around the city of San Francisco for a fraction of the price you’d pay with Ubers or cabs. For Android users, the official app will finally be available tomorrow, August 28th, adding gobs of new users into the fold. Let’s hope with the thousands of new Android users comes even more success, bringing Lyft to more cities around the US. Would any of our readers be interested in trying out Lyft or better yet, becoming a Lyft driver?
I’d be wary of any “extensive background check” these sites claim to do. I signed up on a car rental site claiming extensive background checks with my wife’s FB account, then had my dad pickup the car (a ridiculously expensive sports car).
As a user, it was awesome. As someone who cares about safety, it terrified me a bit.
This is just a ripoff of Sidecar. Sidecar has been around months before Lyft has.
Cool idea, but also dangerous. I know that several cabs have been robbed. Now I am sure you won’t be carrying around lots of money but what about being attacked by someone.
There definitely seems like a danger from using something like this in the real world but with Lyft, it’s kinda like your job. Like a cab driver. I’m sure not everyone would want to sign up to be a driver, but for passengers, it seems relatively as safe as anything else.
Just make sure you carry a bigger gun than the other guy.
Yeah its dangerous but it would come in handy. The train in northern ca is always experiencing suicides on the track. And when it happens it could take hours to get home. At night you’re pretty jacked. So when that happens this is a good solution because a whole lot of people would be up for it and there is safety in numbers. If nothing else you chances of being hacked up first is lower. :b
This is perfect for a copycat Zodiac killer…..
Yeah, but a copycat Zodiac killer could just kill… you know, cab drivers.
but we ARE the cab drivers nowwwww but fo free
No no no.. You have to apply to be a driver and after an extensive background check, only 5% of applicants get in. I’m sure those people are well aware of the danger of signing up to be a driver but they pay I’m sure is good.
Definitely a lot safer for passengers who use the service. For sure.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
so like yea, still risky hahahaah
It’s now available for Android in SF https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.lyft.android