The Uber Ride from Hell

I took an Uber from the Metro Station to my dad's house in the middle of nowhere Maryland. The first thing I noticed was the SUV was lurching forward every two seconds like the driver was hitting the gas and then pulling back, but she wasn't. The car is just a piece of shit.

We're going along and my driver was guided to take a left turn at a road that was closed. We can't turn, so she tries to pull back into traffic. It's dusk, the road is wet from a previous rainstorm, and while the cars are coming on in the other two lanes I notice one of them doesn't have his lights on. She doesn't see him and starts to pull out.

"STOP!" I yell, "You can't see him!"

She stops and then makes the wise decision to wait until all the cars have passed.

The Uber navigation app she's using instructs her to make a U-turn.

"Ma'am, it's just going to take you back to the closed road", I say.

"We'll that's what it's telling me to do", she responds. Great, my driver is a believer in the infallibility of technology. The app doesn't know the road is closed and will forever instruct her to take it.

Sure enough we get back to the closed road and the brilliant, all knowing app, wants us to go down it.

"What do I do?" she asks me.

You're the skilled Uber driver, you tell me.

I instruct her to go down to the next road and take a right and I take out SIRI. She got me through Estonia, she can get me through anything.

We're able to route around the closure and we're back on track driving through the back roads of Maryland.

I notice she's got her high beams on, but I've already been enough of a back seat driver so I remain silent. Somebody flashes their lights, and she flicks them off.

All the lights turn off.

She plays with them flicking them on and off and asks out loud, "Why don't the lights work?"

"I think you have to have the high beams on for your lights to work. You should check that."

She's got on a Christian radio station on full blast and is singing along to songs to Jesus. Please lady, I know you want to see Jesus, but I don't. Can you pay attention? You seem to think lanes are simply suggestions and Jesus will save you from your own mistakes.

We get on a main road and after a few miles the police block it off and send us left. Why? Probably flooding, Maryland has received tremendous amounts of rain this month. Again she won't listen to me and keeps obeying the Uber app instructing her to turn around and try and bust her way through the roadblock. She keeps attempting to go down side streets to bypass it. She seems to think if she just can just get six feet beyond the roadblock there will be clear sailing. I'm thinking if she succeeds we could be running into a newly formed river. The police don't block main roads for no reason.

After she spends ten minutes listening to her app instruct her on how to circle back to the roadblock, I get her to go a different way but I'm still arguing with her to stop listening to her app.

"Ma'am? Can you turn down the radio so we can communicate?"

"What?!"

Exactly.

We finally get back to the main road, and twice she follows a car in front of her into a left hand turn lane.

"Go straight!" I shout from the back.

"Don't worry sir, you've got the best driver on the road tonight", she declares proudly.

“Then we’re all doomed”, I mumble.

I no sooner get that out then the heavens open up. Sheets and sheets of water pummel the car in one of those East Coast thunderstorms of biblical proportions. She pushes her head over the steering wheel, peering through the gloom, trying to see the road.

"Ma'am”, I say as calmly and clearly as possible, fully aware that the information that I must convey to her, and it is vital she must comprehend, holds both our lives in the balance, "You need to turn on the windshield wipers".

And can you turn up the radio? I need to sing a song to Jesus.