A study compiled by three American universities has revealed that cab-hailing companies such as Lyft and Uber discriminate against women and African-American individuals. According to the findings, African-American callers who requested for rides had to wait for longer and had more cancellations than white callers.
The findings reported in the BBC suggested that women were likely to be overcharged and taken on longer routes. Researchers, who were part of the study, took more than 1,000 rides in Boston and Seattle using three taxi-hailing companies. The study was conducted over a period of two years by researchers attached to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Washington, and Stanford University.
During tests conducted in Boston, each researcher called for rides under two different sounding names. The names the team used differed from "white" sounding names to "black" sounding names.
The study in Boston revealed that the cancellation rate for the distinctively "black sounding" names was higher than those for the "white" sounding names. Also, male passengers with "black" sounding names who requested for rides in areas where the density of drivers was less were twice as likely to have their requests canceled.
The lead author of the study, Professor Christoper Knittel, MIT Sloan School of Management, told Bloomberg that for many start-ups the trend is a learning process. " You can't expect these companies to have everything perfect right out of the gate," he said.
Prof. Knittel noted that there are companies looking to minimize racial discrimination using technology. Airbnb Inc. studied biases using its system and released a report of its findings recently. The company aims to change its policies due to its findings.
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