‘It’s to make you book your ride faster’: Customer says Uber is ‘lying’ about the number of available cars on its real-time map

Londoner and TikTok user Sakky (@uxplosiveideas) thinks he may have caught Uber lying about the "real-time" nature of its cars on the road.

If you've ever hailed a ride on the app and, before booking it, saw a bunch of cars riding around in your area on your Uber map, you may have thought to yourself, "Oh that one's close by I should book it right now!"

But then you've got to wait around 15 minutes for a car to show up, even though the map showed you one that was practically inside your living room.

Sakky seems to believe that this is intentional. He claims Uber does it create a sense of urgency on the rider's part. He posted his findings after conducting an experiment, which he documented in a viral TikTok video.

Was Uber caught lying?

"POV you realize Uber cars on the map aren't actually Ubers..." the TikToker writes in a text overlay over their video. It begins by showing a map of the available rideshare vehicles in Sakky's area.

The Uber One customer shows that a car is available nearby for a ride that costs around the equivalent of $14. His clip soon transitions to what he appears to claim is damning evidence that the graphics of the cars driving on the city streets aren't where Uber says they are.

@uxplosiveideas uber has been lying to me this whole time! #uber #uberdriver #driving #apps ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey

He records himself riding his bike near the Bermondsey Square Hotel in London. While a black cab can be seen driving on the street in question, there don't seem to be any other cars in the area.

Sakky goes on to write that the reason these animations on the app exist is to get folks to book their rides more quickly: "If only people realized it's to make you book your ride faster," he added, before flipping the camera around and shaking his head in disapproval.

He adds in a text overlay of the video: "Uber has been lying to me this whole time!"

Is it true?

Many said that Sakky's video proved the car maps were actually real, however, as they pointed to the Black Cab driving down the road right in front of him.

This sparked a conversation between various users in the comments section who engaged in some polemics as to whether Black Cabs could be booked through Uber.

@uxplosiveideas uber has been lying to me this whole time! #uber #uberdriver #driving #apps ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey

In short, they can (even if Sakky and others didn't think so) and the longtime car-driving service in London even announced its partnership with Uber online. Becoming a certified London Black Cab driver is no small feat—drivers are expected to complete a test called "the knowledge" which necessitates that each prospective taxi not only "know the name and location of every street" in London, but they must also know "the shortest or quickest route to it."

Ominous reports of "the knowledge" are facing "extinction," thanks to GPS navigation units and the number of applicants submitting their names to be employees in London's Black Cab service.

NPR reported that several black cabbies have come to the defense of the knowledge, stating that dedicating oneself to memorizing these routes is infinitely more effective than utilizing traffic monitoring GPS units. Not only that, but there was another cab driver who claimed studies have proven that cabbies who demonstrate efficacy in passing "the knowledge" test have demonstrably greater long-term memory retention than the average human brain. It's a claim that Hidden London has reported on as well.

Black Cabs aside, however, Sakky isn't the only person who believes the Ubers shown on the map aren't real. One Redditor claimed that they, too, saw cars purportedly drive past their house on the map while they were standing outside. However, there weren't any cars that went by him in real-time.

One person responded, "Some are real, some are fake."

While someone else agreed, they say rideshare service accurately shows where its cars are located: "Uber cars are fake and merely meant to represent availability. Lyft cars interestingly are very real and only lag maybe 20 seconds behind what you see. I've even accidentally stalked some when staking out a waiting area."

Mashable also reported about the lack of consistency between the representations of cars on the road: "Those car graphics driving around are a simplified snapshot of driver availability, since it would get chaotic to show every real-time driver on the app. Even though it's not an exact representation of the road, it shows batch matching in action—just because a driver is literally driving by doesn't mean you'll be paired with them."

For some folks who responded to Sakky's video didn't think that the cars on the map accurately represent the number of cars on the road: "It was so obvious when there were 3 within 5 minutes and then the only options when booked it were 20 minutes away," one person said.

Someone else penned, "It's not exactly real time but it's real."

The Daily Dot has reached out to Uber and Sakky via email for further comment.

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