Uber works the five dollar fares on Howard (big fucking deal)

Former taxi driver...will he rip you off?

Uber driver Daryl Rodgers knows what he will find when driving after midnight on the weekends. “I had a lot of people who couldn’t tell what they remember from that night, they would pass out in my passenger seat until I got to their destination,” said Rodgers. The number of DUI arrest made by Tampa Police has dropped dramatically this year. For the first six months of 2014 TPD made 1124 dui arrest. In the same period in 2015 they made 776 arrests for driving while intoxicated. And Uber could be one of the reasons. Tampa Police began late in 2014 working with South Tampa bars to trained bartenders and valets to spot impaired drivers and suggest they find another way, like Uber home. TPD spokeswoman Andrea Davis tells 8 On Your Side that valet drivers have been advised to notify them when an impaired driver gets behind the wheel. But 8 On Your Side also noticed that many of the places that Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office found that many drunk drivers take their last drink at, like MacDinton’s and The Lodge on South Howard, are the same places Uber list at their most popular bar destinations.

 The Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission tells News Channel 8 there are other safety concerns. “There have been dozens of cases where we found people to have very lengthy criminal histories to include kidnapping, false imprisonment, domestic violence, prostitution, you name it across the board,” said Kyle Cockream, Executive Director of the Hillsborough PTC. “Look past the Uber cloud at what’s really going on there and do a little due diligence and what they’ll typically find out is maybe not everything is as it seems,” said Cockream.