Will self-driving ridesharing cars get tips as much as human drivers do.
Are you the type of person that never leaves a tip or the kind that nearly always leaves a tip?
Interestingly, Americans spend about $36.4 billion annually on tips so obviously, somebody is opting to put that extra gratuity onto their bill.
It seems like a foregone conclusion that we tend to leave a tip on our restaurant bill, doing so based on the service provided by the waiter or waitress and also perhaps out of a sense of duty or guilt (plus, it could be a mixture of fearful embarrassment or even dreading possible retribution if caught not providing a tip).
Shift your attention away from restaurant tipping and consider tipping in a different context.
Do you tip your vaunted Uber or Lyft ridesharing driver?
On the one hand, it seems like a stretch to suggest that a ridesharing driver should receive a tip since they are merely steering a car from point A to point B, but at the same time you have to admit that Uber or Lyft drivers can choose to do a better or extraordinary job of driving you to your destination, thus warranting a tip for those that are stellar performers.
Some drivers especially aim to please.
They will play music from the radio that fits your tastes. They will offer you free bottled water. They will ask you if the temperature is okay and adjust the settings as needed. They will gently inquire you about your day and be sympathetic when you carp about how rough work is. For a variety of assorted reasons, perhaps providing a tip makes sense.
Tipping for a taxi or cab driver used to be somewhat arduous since you tended to pay for those rides via cash. Having the added dough to cover a tip was at times a tortuous affair, forcing you to dig deeply into your cluttered wallet or purse, plus the mental contortions involved in calculating a suitable tip were painful.
Nowadays, most ridesharing apps offer a suggested tip that can be paid easily, or it can at least calculate a tip based on your instructions. The payment of the tip is seamless and comes directly from your ridesharing account or is charged to your on-file credit card.
One might say that it is nearly friction-free to leave a tip for your ridesharing driver.
If that seems like a suggestion that we are therefore generously giving out ridesharing driver tips, a recent study of Uber riders tends to indicate that we are not doing so as much as you might assume.
Approximately 60% of Uber riders never tip, per the study results, and only a meager 1% always provide a tip.
There are several limitations to the research study, so be cautious in over-generalizing those stats. Nonetheless, it is one of the most comprehensive ridesharing tips-related dataset analyses done to-date.
You might have a sunnier outlook and consider the other side of the coin, namely that apparently 40% of Uber riders do tip from time-to-time.
That’s kind of cheerful for those that believe those hard-working Uber drivers deserve a tip.
Of course, interpreting these stats is somewhat problematic due to the aspect that we don’t know how often the ridesharing drivers were doing something to warrant a tip.
In other words, if your ridesharing driver picks you up and does nothing out of the ordinary other than driving you to your destination, most would probably say that’s an expected aspect of the ridesharing service and there’s no basis for therefore providing a tip.
Imagine that 90% of ridesharing rides were not especially memorable and you could then equally imagine that we might only be tipping the 10% of the rides that were memorable.
There is presumably a symbiosis of the driver and rider “duality” that comes to play in the tip preponderance equation.
Another facet might be the ratings systems that ridesharing services use.
Since you get to rate your driver, there are many riders that might consider giving out a high rating as the equivalent of paying a driver a monetary tip. When you give your driver 5 stars, you can justify in your mind that you’ve effectively given them a tip, whereas you might have given the driver a 4-star rating as a standard score that reflects unexemplary driving.
Here’s an interesting question to consider: Will we give out tips when ridesharing is being performed by true self-driving cars?
Your first thought might be that it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to give a tip to a self-driving car.
A true self-driving car is being driven by an AI system, and there’s no human driver, so it seems crazy to suggest you’d leave a tip for a disembodied piece of Artificial Intelligence.
Well, you might indeed leave a tip, doing so for reasons that are perhaps not immediately obvious and yet will resonate with your sense of fair play when presented with them.
Let’s unpack the matter.
The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars
It is important to clarify what I mean when referring to true self-driving cars.
True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.
These driverless cars are considered a Level 4 and Level 5, while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-ons that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).
There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out).
Since the semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, such cars aren’t particularly going to alter the dynamics of whether to tip your ridesharing driver or not. There is essentially no difference between using a Level 2 or Level 3 versus a conventional car when it comes to driving and therefore doesn’t merit any notable changes in your decision about tipping.
Presumably, if you tip your ridesharing driver nowadays, you’ll continue to do so in the future. And, those of you that don’t tip your ridesharing driver is not going to suddenly start doing so simply because the car is a Level 2 or Level 3.
It is notable to point out that in spite of those idiots that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, do not be misled into believing that you can take away your attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.
You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the car, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.
Reasons To Tip A Self-Driving Car
For Level 4 and Level 5 cars, there presumably won’t be a human driver at the wheel.
It seems straightforward that if there isn’t a human driver you, therefore, won’t provide a tip.
Not so fast!
Let’s consider a variety of situations that might inspire you to leave a tip:
· Back-up Safety Driver. Most of today’s tryouts of Level 4 self-driving cars include a human back-up or safety driver that is monitoring the AI system and intended to take over the driving if needed. If you snag a ride in one of these tryout journeys, you might be tempted to leave a tip for your mindful back-up driver. This tends to occur if the person answers your questions during the drive, which many passengers often pepper the driver with what a self-driving car is, how does it work, etc.
· Remote Teleoperator. Some self-driving cars are being equipped to allow a remote human driver to take over the car, though I’ve questioned the practicality of such an arrangement (see my posting here). It’s more likely that the remote operator will be the equivalent of an OnStar agent, being able to answer questions or summon emergency services for you. In that case, you might provide a tip to those human remote operators, if they do an outstanding job.
· Car Cleaner. When you stay at a hotel, some believe that at the end of your stay that you should leave a tip for the maid or cleaning service, even though you might have never actually seen the person(s) that cleaned your room. When you get into a self-driving car, the odds are that most ridesharing services are going to keep their cars relatively clean, otherwise, riders won’t want to use them. If you think the car on an occasion is especially squeaky clean, maybe leave a tip for the cleaning crew.
· Ride-A-Long Nanny. One open question about letting your kids ride alone in a self-driving car is whether there ought to be an adult supervising them (there won’t be a human driver anymore and thus no in-car adult presence). I’ve predicted that we’ll see the rise of a new type of job, the self-driving car nanny or equivalent. Some ridesharing services might provide a screened “nanny” that will accompany the self-driving car ride. Perhaps you’ll provide a tip to the in-car adult if your kids report that the person did a great job overseeing them (does that include letting them off-the-hook on finishing their homework during the ride?).
· Assistance Getting In/Out. There is supposed to be a mobility-for-all phenomena that will arise due to the advent of driverless cars. People that today are mobility marginalized will finally be able to make use of cars. For some of those people, the act of getting into and out of a car is a chore or arduous difficulty. We are likely to have people that will aid you in getting into and out of a self-driving car, for which you might want to tip those helpful assistants.
· Small Business Owners. Pundits predict that self-driving cars will be owned solely by large companies that will have massive fleets of driverless vehicles. I am a bit of a contrarian and claim that we’ll still have individuals owning such cars, doing so for their own personal use and to make money by putting the self-driving car onto a ridesharing network while they are at work. You might get into a driverless car that has a sign in it telling you that it is owned by your neighbor down the street, in which case you might be tempted to provide a tip.
· Anthropomorphic AI. Humans oftentimes will anthropomorphize inanimate objects, such as the famous Wilson volleyball in the movie Castaway. An AI system is going to readily be anthropomorphized since it will be able to converse with riders and seemingly be human-like in its conversation. I’m betting that there will be riders that perceive the AI to be a human and therefore seek to provide a tip to the AI system itself. Guess we’ll need a tip jar next to the speakers and a means for the AI to know that you’ve left some extra coinage for it.
· AI Developers. Not all self-driving cars will drive in precisely the same way. It is a myth that driverless cars will strictly drive in a legal manner always and not vary from each other. The driving act involves a lot of latitude. If you get into a self-driving car and it offers a special capability such as a willingness to rush through traffic to get you to work on-time, perhaps you’ll be tempted to tip the AI developers that crafted the capability. Of course, AI developers are already a hot commodity and it’s doubtful they need such tips, though I’m sure they would gladly accept the added change.
Those are some of the key reasons that might spur riders of driverless cars into providing a tip.
Conclusion
In a Utopian world, we would magically have all self-driving cars and no human-driven cars.
The reality is that we are going to have a mixture of human-driven cars and driverless cars for quite a while.
Initially, there will only be a few self-driving cars on the roads. Gradually, slowly, the mix of driverless cars will rise, and the number of human-driven cars will lessen. Keep in mind that today there are over 250 million conventional cars in the United States and those vehicles aren’t going to overnight be replaced with driverless cars.
I point this out to emphasize that for ridesharing purposes you’ll be able to choose whether to have your ride be a human-driven car or be a driverless car.
Some are worried that the tips for human drivers will go down precipitously due to the “smoother” ride that you’ll get from a driverless car. Plus, the AI system will shut-up when you tell it to do so, and you don’t need to deal with the emotional state of the driver.
An equally compelling argument can be made that the human drivers will start getting more tips and more frequently be granted tips by grateful riders. There will be passengers that find the driverless cars to be barren of humanness and therefore seek out the interaction possible with a human driver at the wheel. Tips might go through the roof as such riders opt to reward the human drivers for continuing to drive a car in the face of the robot takeover revolution.
One colleague of mine insists that tipping any ridesharing driver is ridiculous and declares that whether a human is involved or not, and whether the AI is wondrous or not, you’ll see a tip over his dead body.
Even the best self-driving car is seemingly unlikely to get a tip out of someone with that viewpoint.
I wonder though if such no-tippers realize that once AI rules the world, those AI systems might seek revenge against those that resisted, and probably put at the top of the list the humans that failed to tip their driverless car.
