Why People Trust Strangers Behind the Wheel

You’re walking down the street, a random car stops by and asks to give you a lift. 

What do you do? Well, if you’re a sane person, you’ll run away, pretend that they aren’t there, scream, panic… 

But naturally, you won’t get in the car because of ‘stranger danger’ and similar situations.

But then you order an Uber, pay for it, and get in the car of a complete stranger. How does that make sense? 

Sure, you say something along the lines, “I’ve asked for one, and didn’t get the other”, and while that may be true, still, in both cases, you end up in the same situation – in the car with a stranger. 

How do you feel relaxed in the second scenario but not in the first one? How come you check to see if your door is locked in your own neighborhood, but you have no problem riding shotgun with a total stranger? 

What gives? 

The real story is this weird mix of technology, psychological tricks, and a complete and total rewrite of our social rules. 

Stick around because we’ll dig deeper into this. 

Trust Through Apps

Do you know where that trust you feel comes from? 

Believe it or not, it comes from an app on your phone. Before you even see the car, you see the driver’s name, face, car model, and license plate number.

Then you can watch their little icon slowly creeping (okay, that may be an unfortunate choice of words, but you get the point) toward your house, and that way, you’re not surprised when they get here. Then there’s the star rating, which makes you feel like you’re choosing a professional with a proven track record, so of course, they’re not a human trafficker. 

In reality, it’s not really the specific person you trust but the brand. 

Take Uber, for instance. They’re huge, they’re well-known, everybody uses Uber, and people are generally fine. 

However, as much as you can trust the brand, that trust is extremely fragile. The moment something goes wrong, the whole thing falls apart. All of a sudden, you’re not just someone using a trusted rideshare service, you’re a person in a car crash. 

And yes, you can get help from a rideshare accident lawyer to help you with the legal side of things, but will that trust really ever be back? 

Why the Mind Accepts the Risk

Modern life forces you to use mental shortcuts, and the rideshare app? It’s a perfect one. 

The reason this is a mental shortcut is that your brain is wired to be suspicious of strangers. 

It’s a survival technique, even though that suspicion is not always realistic. But with a rideshare app, that worry is offloaded onto the system. Your inner voice tells you that, if so many people use the app and everyone is fine, you’ll probably be fine, too. This isn’t some deep, personal trust but a transactional one.

Like when you order items online and pay for them before they get to you. You trust the seller to ship the items and that the items are what they say they are. 

It’s simple and clean. You’re the rider, they’re the driver. There’s a start to the ride and there’s an end. No messy social strings attached, which might not be the case if you had a coworker give you a ride. They might ask a favor, who knows. 

Social Factors Behind the Passenger-Driver Dynamic

This new trust is also a massive social experiment. 

Think about it – it hasn’t even been 20 years since we went from “heck, no” to “sure, stranger, let me get into your car and pay you for it.” A big reason for it is that the company behind the ride is not selling only a ride. 

They’re selling ‘trust’ as a product, all packaged in a nice logo wrapping paper with a liability policy bow. 

But don’t think that this experience is the same all around. You’ll notice that there are a lot more women speaking out about safety issues than there are men. This trust also looks very different depending on where you are in the world. One reason for that is local laws, but the other (which is much more noticeable) is the cultural attitude toward strangers. 

For some, ridesharing is a convenient luxury. 

For others, it’s how they get to work and the grocery store. It’s a tough reality you see behind all this, where the freedom you get from this kind of mobility also inevitably comes with a risk. 

Conclusion 

Isn’t it wild when you realize that we, as a society, actually hacked our own ancient, suspicious brains? 

It’s like there was an alarm you couldn’t remove before, and now – poof! 

It’s gone, and we’re happily not just riding in the cars with total strangers, but we’re also paying them for it. A 5-star rating and a little cartoon car moving on a digital map? Why, that’s a trustworthy person right there. Let me get in. 

Now pack up, your Uber (or Lyft) is almost here.