Tales from my Uber
WHAT do a rich businessman, AFL footballer and international pilot have in common? They’ve all ridden in this Highton dad’s Mitsubishi.
Bus driver Simon Royal, 51, signed up to ride sharing app Uber in January after his sister suggested it, and said while “100 per cent” of his passengers had been good, he had a few pet peeves.
They include trying to pick up people in busy shopping centre car parks, passengers asking to drop their mate off, driving all the way to Torquay to take a surfer 2km to the shops and being told “I’ll just be a second” while he’s forced to wait out the front of a halfway destination.
Apart from that, it’s not hard to be a model passenger.
“Good rider behaviour is just great conversation,” Mr Royal said.
“There’s been everything from AFL footballers, to international people from the air show, that were way out of my league. Business guys ... just really interesting people.”
Mr Royal has been trialling a new feature on the app that officially launches in Geelong early next week, called Driver Destinations.
It is aimed at making it easier for casual drivers to operate more often for shorter bursts of time, such as their commute to work, by linking them with riders who are heading the same way.
A Uber driver from Torquay working fulltime in Geelong could input their destination and only be matched with riders heading to Geelong.
Mr Royal said he was essentially getting paid for going to work.
“I do three jobs working for three different bus companies on a casual basis, so I do a lot of driving in between,” he said.
“Now I leave home, head to work and if there’s someone on the way that needs a lift I pick up the fare.”
Uber state manager Lucas Groeneveld described it as a carpooling concept, and that it “supports the idea that we don’t need as many cars on the road”.
It’s been running in Melbourne for a while but is relatively new to Geelong.