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Here are the cities where Uber charges you the most to ensure a ‘safe ride’

Published Oct 17th, 2015 12:15PM EDT
Uber Safe Ride Fees By City

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If you’ve ever looked at your receipt for an UberX ride, you might notice that the company charges you something called a “safe rides fee.” This fee covers the cost of everything associated with giving you a safe ride to your destination, including insurance, 24-hour support and background checks on prospective drivers. Ah yes. Background checks on drivers. Uber has shown itself to be awesome at those.

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At any rate, Business Insider did a thorough search of Uber safe ride fee data and created a massive list of the cheapest and most expensive cities in the U.S. for Uber to ensure that your ride won’t pose a grave danger to your health. We were most interested to see the cities with the highest safe ride fees and they amazingly didn’t include New York City, which actually doesn’t have any safe ride fees whatsoever.

For your information, here are the five most expensive:

  • Gary, Indiana: $2.50 per ride. Gary was ranked at No. 19 in Forbes’ list of America’s most miserable cities and it was known in the 1990s as the murder capital of America with the highest per-capita murder rate in the U.S.
  • Inland Empire, California: $2.45 per ride.
  • Detroit, Michigan: $2.30 per ride. Can anyone really be surprised it costs a lot to ensure safe rides in Detroit?
  • Fort Myers, Florida: $2.25 per ride. This is a rather surprising city to be this expensive for safe ride fees. It’s a popular destination for beach goers and is the Spring Training home of the Boston Red Sox and Minnesota Twins… how unsafe can it be?
  • Ann Arbor, Michigan: $2.20 per ride. Go Blue!

If you’re interested in seeing where your city ranks in the list of Uber safe ride fees, check out Business Insider’s full post here.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.