Individual and Collaborative Behaviors of Rideshare Drivers in Protecting their Safety

The safety of passengers of rideshare apps has received attention from researchers, yet there is a lack of research on safety of rideshare drivers in the context of CSCW and HCI. As drivers are also an important user in the ecosystem of the ridesharing systems, we conducted interviews with drivers in the U.S. to understand how they, individually and collaboratively, address safety related issues they face conducting their job. We identified the factors that contributed to drivers' feelings of safety and the strategies they engaged in to protect themselves. We found that drivers relied on methods that were technical, social, and physical, to ensure their safety and engaged in informal collaborative and communicative activities with other drivers inside and outside of the ridesharing system. We discuss implications for future design for ridesharing apps and other location-based computer-supported collaborative systems that have potential safety hazards.