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Uber reduces the chances that drivers will cancel your ride

Drivers can limit rides to those they can actually take, and they'll get paid if they wait.

Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

When you're hailing an Uber, few things are as frustrating as a driver cancelling your trip -- there may be a good reason, but that still leaves you high and dry. You won't have to deal with those headaches quite so often going forward, thankfully. Uber is introducing a range of driver app and policy changes that should increase the odds of getting a driver who can take your business. To begin with, it's planning a wider release for a Driver Destinations feature that lets workers only take rides going in their general direction, such as when they're heading home from their day job. Only a handful of cities (both US and worldwide) have Destinations right now, but it'll be available in more US cities this week and worldwide "soon."

There's more. Later in June, drivers in some cities worldwide will have a "pause" option that stops new requests from coming in. You shouldn't have drivers cancel on you just because they're about to have lunch or sign off for the day. Also, they're more likely to be patient if you take a while to get out the door. Uber is expanding a policy that pays drivers for any wait longer than 2 minutes. That does mean that you'll pay a bit extra if you're pokey, but it beats dealing with an annoyed driver or having to hail another car entirely. A dozen US cities will be using this policy later this month.