HUMOUR

Ndumiso Ngcobo is lost as to why Uber drivers eschew technology

Many people over the millennia have cast aspersions on Moses’s navigation skills for taking the Children of Israel on a meandering, 40-year-long Contiki. And those are just the decent, kind folks. The most vicious among us have downright ridiculed him and the hundreds of thousands who followed him going around in circles. Some point out that a snail could cover the longest route from Egypt to Jerusalem in about 10 years. And that we’re not even talking about a snail with a gym membership.

I call BS on these aspersions. For starters, we don’t even know which route the quintessential shorttempered bearded one took. He couldn’t have had a useful map. Besides, I can’t imagine that it’s easy to negotiate one’s way in a robe, sandals, without spandex tights. Also, we don’t even know how long Moses had to wait for his wife Zipporah while she tried on different outfits every morning. So hands off Moses.

I’ll tell you who needs to hang their collective heads in embarrassment. It boggles the mind just how often we still find ourselves lost in this, the 2018th year of our Lord, with the digital technology we walk around with in our pockets all day.

Just last week, I hailed an Uber vehicle from Kaya House in Parktown North. The first thing the driver asked me is whether I had a preferred route home. I explained that the time being around 5.30pm, there was no point in having a favourite route because Waze chooses the quickest route by design. So, just follow your navigation app. According to Waze, the quickest route (not to be confused with the shortest route) was over Jan Smuts, to 11th Avenue, to Osborn Road, over Louis Botha and a few other streets named after Voortrekker leaders, through Sylvia Pass towards OR Tambo. And the woman who is one of the Waze voices was giving him crisp, specific instructions.

I was in the back seat, my head buried in my device, trying to reduce the 3 000-odd backlog in my e-mail inbox. When I looked up, he was taking a detour from the recommended route, on-ramping onto the M1 South. Why was he ignoring the app, I asked calmly. “Look at all that traffic. It’s shorter this way,” he said, pointing. I wanted to ask if he had a superior bird’s-eye view of all the routes compared to the satellites feeding Waze, but I bit my tongue.

I shouldn’t have. About three minutes later we came to a standstill on the M1. Three minutes. Five minutes. Waze recalculated our estimated time to be nine minutes longer than the original route. I groaned audibly. Almost 12 minutes later he was offramping from the M1. “What are you doing now?” I inquire. “I’m going through the CBD towards the original Eastgate route,” he says. Waze recalculates. Sixteen minutes longer than the original route.

And this is how I found myself riding through the side streets of Hillbrow. That is not Uber-friendly territory. Not only have I heard harrowing tales of violent clashes between metered taxi operators and Uber drivers, but my eldest son and I were recently bundled out of an Uber vehicle in that vicinity.

You know how it goes: if you’re thinking of buying a Beemer, you see BMWs everywhere. And if you’re worried about a violent misunderstanding over taxi turf, you see metered taxi drivers everywhere. It felt like there was a helicopter shining a spotlight on the car. Few things scream “Uber” quite like a silver grey Toyota Corolla with a driver wearing a neatly ironed shirt buttoned up all the way and a big-headed, bespectacled man with a bunny-caught-in-the-headlights look, trying too hard to look relaxed. I felt like Bibi Netanyahu jogging through a Palestinian refugee camp in a bright T-shirt with the words “Zionist and Proud”.

This is the path we have chosen; totally ignoring this incredible technology at our disposal. I’ve been reliably told that the most potent energy ever detected in the history of science is a cosmic gamma-ray burst. I disagree vehemently. This is because scientists have never tested the potency of this energy called human stupidity. I, for one, cannot wait until we successfully create “clever” enough artificial intelligence that will take over on this planet. In the words of Agent Smith in The Matrix, “You are a plague, and we are the cure.” LS

Few things scream ‘Uber’ quite like a silver grey Toyota Corolla with a driver wearing a neatly ironed shirt