80 People Share The Funniest Things Their Uber Drivers Texted Them

Uber was founded in 2009 by entrepreneurs Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick after they had trouble getting a cab in Paris during a snowstorm. What started as a simple idea to request rides through a smartphone app has transformed into a global transportation giant. The company launched publicly in San Francisco in 2011 and has since expanded to operate in approximately 70 countries and 15,000 cities worldwide.

The numbers behind Uber are pretty wild. The platform has over 180 million monthly active users and coordinates an average of 36 million trips and delivery orders per day. Since its inception, Uber has coordinated 64 billion trips and has grown to include not just ride-hailing, but also food delivery through Uber Eats, package delivery, and freight transport. The company now works with over 8 million drivers and couriers globally.

With such massive scale comes inevitable variety in experiences. When you have millions of people interacting every single day, you’re bound to get some truly memorable exchanges. While most rides are perfectly ordinary, some result in the kind of awkward or hilarious text messages that people can’t help but share online. These moments range from drivers sending oddly specific instructions to passengers asking the most bizarre questions imaginable.

But alongside the funny stories, there are legitimate concerns that many users have raised about feeling uncomfortable or unsafe in rideshares. People have reported feeling unsafe due to drivers behaving erratically, being verbally aggressive, or making inappropriate comments during rides. Both passengers and drivers have the ability to report when they feel uncomfortable, and these concerns are taken seriously enough that accounts can be disabled for guideline violations.

One common worry is that the screening process might not catch everyone who shouldn’t be driving. Background checks can miss certain issues, and the gig economy model means rideshare drivers don’t have the same regulatory oversight that traditional taxi drivers do. There have also been situations where companies didn’t act quickly enough on customer complaints, allowing problematic drivers to keep operating for longer than they should have.

To address safety concerns, Uber has built several features into the app. There’s a button that connects you to emergency services and automatically shares your location and trip details with authorities. The app can also detect if your trip goes off-course or if there might have been a crash, then checks in to see if you need help. You can share your trip status with friends or family so they can track where you are in real-time.

The app also lets you record audio during your ride, which gets encrypted and can be accessed later if you need to report something. When you communicate with your driver through the app, your actual phone numbers stay hidden from each other. There’s even a safety agent you can contact during rides if something feels off but isn’t quite an emergency situation.

For drivers, Uber does multi-step background checks looking for things like impaired driving and violent offenses. They recheck drivers at least once a year and use monitoring technology to flag new issues between those checks. The app also uses photo verification to make sure the person driving is actually the person who passed the screening.

Still, even with all these tools, both riders and drivers need to stay aware. Verify the driver matches what’s in the app before getting in, sit in the back seat when you can, and trust your gut if something feels wrong. You can end a trip early if you’re uncomfortable, and the fare will usually get adjusted. No system is perfect, so knowing what safety features are available and actually using them when needed makes a real difference.