I prefer taking Lyft to Uber because with the former the default mode is friendly conversation. When you take an Uber the assumption is that neither of you will talk to each other, like in a Taxi or Limo. In this sense Lyft is more revolutionary than Uber because it fundamentally changes the social dynamic, not just the economics.
Huh, I've always thought of chatting as the default in taxis (though not limos). Drivers seem to usually engage in small-talk with me, at least in California and southern Europe. I'm so used to it that the first time I took a taxi in Scandinavia, where the default is no chatting, I was sort of weirded out by the awkwardly silent ride.
It sort of depends on the location, but yeah, some places in the U.S. seem to have super chatty drivers; I've heard some great stories that way.
Interestingly, this hasn't been the case any time I've taken a taxi in NYC (where taxis seem even more a fundamental part of everyday life than most places) in the last decade or two. Now the drivers usually just yell into a cellphone nonstop for the entire ride...
That's been the same for me in NYC, but the whole taxi setup in NYC feels very "high-security", with only a small window peering through a bullet-resistant barrier between the front and back seats. That makes it feel more like a limo, since the driver is in a quasi-armored compartment separate from you, and it doesn't really encourage a friendly chat. In most other parts of the world a taxi is just a regular car, without internal barriers.
Actually now I'm a bit unsure: what is the regional etiquette on whether a single passenger should sit in the back or the front? When I lived in LA, I usually just sat in front, which nobody ever complained about, but in retrospect maybe that was weird? It's definitely more conducive to smalltalk if you're in the front passenger seat, sitting next to the driver.
To me it always seems like the driver tries to gage if you want small talk. I'm not a big talker in the cab, so usually the driver says one or two things and then stops talking. But when I'm in the car with some talkers, they have full conversations.
Does the change in social dynamic result in an improvement in service? I don't think most people are looking for a social dynamic this form of transportation. Most people that I know are looking for friendly, clean, and efficient. Were friendly isn't intrusive unwanted discourse.
I wonder if this is a regional thing. Other than when in a group or when the driver was preoccupied on their cell, I've always made small talk with taxi drivers and uber drivers.
