Sunday, December 20, 2015

HopSkipDrive & Shuddle: Transporting Minors – Safe or Not?

HopSkipDrive and Shuddle are recent venture capitalized startups that specialize in giving rides to unaccompanied minors.

HopSkipDrive claims to be founded by 3 mothers and actually was.

Founder and CEO Joanna McFarland has an MBA from Stanford, a BS from Wharton, has worked for 15 years in product and general management, and has two kids.

Along with the other founder mothers she claims to be part of,

 “A team that cares as much for your kids as they do theirs.’’

To an extent this appears to be true. Unlike Uber or Lyft, HopskipDrive has its drivers fingerprinted and favors Trustline , Live scan  and other safety measures for background checks.

Shuddle's CEO, on the other hand, is Nick Allen who was a co-founder of Sidecar where he clearly worked on his bs – as you can hear in this interview where he claims that Sidecar "really isn't a taxi service at all"...

Like Uber and Lyft, Shuddle formulates long and arcane arguments against using background checks like Trusline and Live scan – which are the standards for child care safety. It's unclear whether Shuddle uses fingerprinting or not. Some places they say they do. In others, they don't mention it.

OOPS - Nick Allen is out at Shuddle. Apparently the company isn't doing too well.

In any case, I would certainly favor HopSkipDrive over Shuddle. Unfortunately, they have a waiver of liability (which is normally used for dangerous activities like parachute jumping or traveling in a war zone) hidden in their Terms where they refuse to guarantee the safety of your kids after all.

I haven't had the luck to have children myself (at least not yet) but I'm advising my numerous cousins, nieces and nephews not to use either service until or unless they get rid of the waivers and guarantee the safety of the children who they transport.

For more detail you can read from my Reply Comments to the CPUC on Unaccompanied Minors below.

Note: The Austin, Texas City Council voted to require Uber and the other tncs to fingerprint their drivers.  In this they join San Antonio, Las Vegas, Portland, most of Europe and China among other places.

Remember the days when San Francisco was the leader in consumer protections and social and political innovations? Now we wonder when the Neanderthals who currently run this city and this state will catch up with the rest of the world?

 How really concerned with safety are HOPSKIPDRIVE and SHUDDLE?

On Shuddle's webpage in its Terms and Services you can read:


… DRIVERS ARE HUMAN BEINGS, AND NO ONE IS PERFECT. SO, AS HARD AS WE TRY, SHUDDLE DOES NOT CONTROL, AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY, RELIABILITY, OR ACCURACY OF, THE DRIVERS’ PROVISION OR PERFORMANCE OF RIDES OR THE CONDITION OF THE VEHICLES IN WHICH RIDES ARE PERFORMED … SHUDDLE MAKES NO WARRANTY, AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE ACCEPTS LIABILITY IN CONNECTION WITH AND/OR ARISING FROM, DRIVER’S PROVISION OF RIDES, THE CONDITION OF THE VEHICLES IN WHICH RIDES ARE PERFORMED, ANY ACTS, ACTION, BEHAVIOR, CONDUCT, AND/OR NEGLIGENCE ON THE PART OF THE DRIVER.


HopSkipDrive, in its Terms, is more specific about their lack of responsibility:


YOUR USE OF THE HOPSKIPDRIVE PROPERTIES IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK and TO 

THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, WE ARE NOT LIABLE 

FOR THE ACTS, ERRORS, OMISSIONS, REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES, 

BREACHES OR NEGLIGENCE OF ANY SUCH DRIVERS OR FOR ANY PERSONAL 

INJURIES, DEATH, PROPERTY DAMAGE, OR OTHER DAMAGES OR EXPENSES 

RESULTING THEREFROM.

I read these waivers to mean that HopSkipDrive and Shuddle "put the safety of your child first" unless your child is molested or otherwise "damaged" during the ride – in which case neither company takes any responsibility whatsoever.

Or, as they used to say in old Mexico, 

"No es mi problema es tu problema."

7 comments:

  1. Right, a user has to agree to hold these companies completely harmless.
    But people don't want to read all that fine print on their little phones. I have told numerous passengers about Uber's "you hold us harmless" clause and they are SO surprised.

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    1. They clearly do not want their customers to read the terms. It's not only impossible to read the terms on the cell phone but there are hard to find on the webpage itself.

      This simply points out the bad faith and dishonesty with which all these companies operate.

      Delete
  2. wow ed, nice job exposing these low lifes, preying on parents concern for their children, and endangering said children is a new low for the tnc's.

    livescan is also the standard sf unified school district uses for vetting its faculty, staff and volunteers.

    is the cpuc allowing age discrimination by allowing a situation that does not meet common standards for the protection of minors?

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  3. http://www.sfexaminer.com/uber-lyft-focus-on-green-bills-not-green-cars/

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  4. Hi Ed! Thanks for covering this. I guess I would slightly quibble with even leading off by being equitable towards Hopskipdrive, as you contrast them with Shuddle, but you do this in the course of criticizing both companies in detail and urging your family not to use either one.

    I don't know what they're thinking, in the sense that I thought that some remedies had kicked in a little bit, flawed and slow as they are, and I thought this was influencing the newer waves of startups not to walk into a trap. So for instance, Homejoy folds, and Luxe goes W2. I don't understand, after those two things, plus the big class-actions, plus arguments like this attorney Reibstein who is pointing out to hard-nosed VCs that misclassification exposure can hinder ROI (http://tinyurl.com/gp873mk), why do brand new startups in 2015 still want to use an almost identical playbook? You picked up on the difference in background checks, but the combination of hands-off 1099 with a high degree of direction and control looks identical to me, the waiver of class-action rights looks identical. How are they not tomorrow's Shannonfodder?

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  5. You actually know how to bring a problem to light and make it important. More people really need to read this and understand this side of your story.

    ReplyDelete