Uber Is Experimenting With Giving Drunk Passengers "Bop It" In Hopes To Distract Them From Beating Up Their Driver

TheGuardian- Uber, the designated driver of the iPhone generation, thinks intoxicated adult passengers are a lot like restless kids: both can be pacified with a game. The on-demand ride app has been conducting an experiment in the North Carolina city of Charlotte in which drivers leave a Bop It – a noisy children’s sound game based around a plastic toy – in the back seat during rides. The goal is that riders who overindulged that evening will become so engrossed that they forget to pester the driver. Bop It, first released in the 1990s, is certainly engrossing. It consists of a stick or handle that is littered with buttons, knobs and cranks, and a pre-recorded voice tells users when a button should be bopped, a crank should twisted and a knob should be pulled. This goes on increasingly fast until the player screws up.

This idea will go one of two ways. One, it’ll work flawlessly. Drunks will get distracted by playing the super-addicting child’s game Bop It and Uber assaults will effectively become non-existent. Ideally that’s what we all want. Drunk riders and their friends enjoy some harmless competition as they’re being escorted from drinking establishment to drinking establishment while the Uber driver doesn’t end up with a black eye. Everybody wins. The second way it can go isn’t so pretty. We’ve all played Bop It, right? Well if you’ve ever played it with friends then you know it can get pretty heated in terms of wanting to be the best at it. Competition leads to anger, anger leads to frustration and frustration leads to a kid’s toy turning into a nightstick. So instead of giving drunk passengers a distraction from beating up the Uber driver they’ve essentially armed the passenger with a weapon they can lodge in the driver’s head. I’m thinking people will go with option 1. Bop It is super addictive and it pulls on nostalgia which drunk people love. But at least one driver is gonna get his skull caved in. Guarantee it.