Reuters reports that ride-sharing service Lyft will install Sickness Kabuki screens in its vehicles – the cost folded into the cost of you next ride – without getting into the cost of the depression and demoralization.
This comes on the heels of mandated Diaper-wearing for both drivers and passengers:
Lyft Inc. said on Friday it would distribute some 60,000 vehicle partition shields to its most-active drivers as a protection against the coronavirus and begin selling the custom-made protective barriers to other drivers later this summer.
The ride-hailing company began in May to require both passengers and drivers to wear a mask during trips and said it had provided North American drivers with more than 150,000 sanitizing products and masks since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Lyft began designing the semi-rigid partition shields, made out of a polycarbonate material, several months ago and has since piloted it with a group of ride-hail drivers to solicit feedback, a spokeswoman said.
“It was critical to us that the design met the needs of rideshare drivers specifically, accommodated a wide range of vehicle models, could be self-installed and easily removed, and could be produced at a price point far lower than what is currently available in the market,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.
Lyft will sell the partitions for about $50 at production cost and without a markup, the company said. Vehicle partition shields are available online from various manufacturers, with prices ranging from $50 to more than $100.
As of March 2019, Lyft had nearly 2 million drivers in the United States and Canada, where it operates. But regulators and analysts estimate the number of active drivers has dropped significantly during the pandemic, when ridership plummeted because of sweeping stay-at-home orders.
Lyft said in June that trip requests on its platform rose around 26% from the low point in April but were still some 70% under prior-year levels.
Has there ever been more reason to own your own car – or just walk – than now?
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And what’s not said will be the number of people not using these services because the number won’t go down. It’s so hard to find somebody with balls we’ll need to line everyone up behind a big magnifier just to see if there are any left. Hell, the wife has more balls than most men these days, esp. in the cities.
Since I don’t have a smart phone, I don’t have either the Uber or Lyft app; ergo, I can’t USE any ride sharing service…
I have reached the conclusion that I’m not from this planet, and I want to go home.
Beam me up, Scotty! There’s no intelligent life down here…