Rides without romance

You know the old designation NSIT — Not Safe in Taxis? Well, we need a new one: TSIU — Too Safe in Ubers. I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of Uber, whether the gig economy puts more money in the pocket of the taxi driver from Wembley or benefits only the San Francisco app-ocracy. I don’t have strong feelings about Ubers vs black cabs and whether the former are undercutting the latter, doing them out of their Knowledge and their livelihoods. My objections to Uber are not economic or ethical, they are romantic. Uber has killed off the back-of-the-taxi clinch.

It used to be that, after a date, a party, a play, a chap could prove his mettle by striding to the kerb, raising his arm and shouting ‘Taxi!’ in a firm, strong baritone. He’d give the address, open the door, usher you in, and there, in the alcoved gloaming of the back seat, he’d lunge. And so great London love affairs began.

Laura Freeman and Lara Prendergast discuss the post-dinner date ‘lunge’:

Not any more. Now there is the question ‘Shall we Uber?’, the drawing of the phone from the pocket, the tapping of the postcode, the wait, ‘Requesting…’, the approach of the little Uber car on screen, stuck in traffic, stuck at the lights, oh, he’s gone the wrong way, back round the roundabout, stuck in traffic again, nearly here, look for the number plate K5YD 1X2…. Meanwhile, two dozen black cabs with their lights on stream down Haymarket and the girl’s feet get cold.

Then, once in the Uber, the girl waits, she hopes, but there is no lunge. The chap rests no hand on her knee; it is cradling his iPhone. He gazes not into her eyes; he is following the passage of the Uber avatar through the midnight satnav streets.