# Do Lyft requests go to the closest driver, or not?



## Agent99

Uber has always insisted that ride requests go to the nearest driver. I thought Lyft claimed the same thing. Or am I wrong?


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## andaas

Yes, and no. See the bold/italic/underlined text below. It's likely more complicated than that, but to put simply, the closest driver is not always the driver selected.

https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/214584737-How-Drivers-and-Passengers-are-Paired

* How Drivers and Passengers are Paired*
In order to keep drivers as busy as possible while also keeping ETAs low for passengers, requests are dispatched to the driver who will arrive soonest. When you drop off a passenger, it's likely that your next request will be close by.

If you've dropped someone off and have been waiting for a longer period of time, *the chances of your next request being further away increase*. This is all in the interest of keeping you busy and maximizing earnings! Metrics such as ratings, acceptance, or cancellation rates do not factor into whether or not you receive a request.


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## afrojoe824

melxjr this might answer why it's been dead for lyft drivers. I also noticed if I park somewhere, I also have a hard time getting pings on lyft from time to time. I guess they want us to dead mile and drive to "find" rides.


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## Buckwheat1210

Recently getting random pings from an hour away and quickly deny those. One was an hour south of me at a mcdonalds. Like I'm gonna go that far to take someone home from work. Negative!


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## Jostnyc

Yeah happens alot to me. Not an hour but 20 minutes away for a 5 minute ride. No good.


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## Ubernomics

Agent99 said:


> Uber has always insisted that ride requests go to the nearest driver. I thought Lyft claimed the same thing. Or am I wrong?


Mostly, yes. However, if you are in an area oversaturated with drivers or have been waiting long for a ping they will send you a ride in the distance where there is a severe shortage.


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## garrobitoalado

I got today a ping 25 minutes from my position.. rejected... I thing it's an equation between time to reach and time you're waiting... I could figure out the equation with time and patience...


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## AllenChicago

How do you tell when you're looking at the "Ping" and the count-down counter:

1. Where the passenger is located?
2. Where that passenger is going?

Maybe I'm accepting the ride requests too quickly and overlooking a button/icon to press for finding out these two items???


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## jo5eph

What i noticed when i was driving lyft is when a passenger requests a ride, they are gonna get the closest driver that has been online the longest. If they cancel and re-request ,then the closest driver to them regardless of how long they have been online will be picked next.


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## Sammy S

probably not.

The algorithms are too complex and take many factors into consideration for who gets the ping.


Shortest distance to the rider, is only one factor, even though an important one


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## Thatendedbadly

Based on my experience today I'd say no for Lyft. The fare was 40 minutes away, probably should have accepted and cancelled but I was honestly a little stunned so I ignored it. The 40 minutes may have been optimistic, 26 miles across town during evening rush hour, around 5pm. Got a testy message in my driver app right after that, if you don't want to drive you should go offline. Seriously. So I did.


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## lyft_audi

So far, all but one of my pickups has been within 5 miles of my current location


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## andaas

We've gone through this discussion a handful of times the past 4-6 months. Lyft "typically" selects the closest driver, however, there are some factors that will sometimes override that. Specifically, drivers who have been online but unused for longer periods of time will sometimes get priority over closer drivers. Also, remember that if you or a passenger has rated one another 3* or lower, they will not be able to be matched - so this can also result in non-closest-vehicle matchmaking.


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## ImmerUber

What's most strange to me are the following two examples of Lyft pairing:
1) Receiving requests from 15 minutes away when there are Lyft drivers available that are closer to the rider than me
2) Being right in the middle of a "Prime Time" shaded red at pink area, but getting requests up to 25 minutes away and there are other Lyft drivers closer to the pax. This happened 4 times in a row until the Lyft "dispatcher" paired me with a pax less than a minute away.

My pax rating is currently 4.97, and has stayed above 4.91 since I started seven months and 1303 passengers ago. So, any idea way so many pairings would be so far away when there's a high demand (100 - 200%) within a mile?


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## JimS

I bit. This morning I had one 25 minutes away. I took the damn ride. Took a lady 2.5 miles who was late to her Waffle House job.  2 stars and a note saying to be considerate to drivers.

I think I kinds enjoyed that. I'm going to keep doing that for a month. Take ALL pings regardless of when and for rides that are less than 20% of the drive time to get to them start with a 1*. They will, in turn, receive my uncompromising 5* service. Because it will be their last ride with me.


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## MiddleClassedOut

Because when surge fares happen, people start to try to wait them out. Therefore requests stop. The requests you get are the ones that are being made - out in the boonies where there are no cars. This happens during bad rainstorms for example, center city goes 150%, so passengers there stop requesting, but there is also high demand in outlying areas. So sometimes if drivers don't accept rides they will actually go past multiple drivers (who also don't want to do it for whatever reason) until it gets to you. 

One example of this in Philly from an event letting out - a concert let out at a big venue in Camden, where no one was available. I always have another device with the passenger app open, and I got a request from there - it definitely went through at least 3 other cars before it got to me on the other side of the river. All the other drivers rejected it. So did I. 

It's better if drivers cancel rather than let them ping through. You can try getting them to pay extra for the pick-up, then sometimes they cancel. I have a text I use for these cases, anything over 10 mins/3 miles gets a text requesting an extra $10 pick-up fee. They always cancel, saving my acceptance rate. Also, when drivers cancel, they have to re-request and this might raise the fare to a Prime Time in the requesting PAX's area too. If it goes up too fast, they will stop putting in requests in an area where no one is available.


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## yucklyftline

I wonder how many drivers get pinged on one request?? I've had pax tell me it took 2 min for the app to find a driver. Could be from bad reception, or even a server issue, but most of the time, it's the 10 seconds every driver is allowed to accept or ignore the ping.

The app says "optimizing" which is lingo for "no one wants to pick you up, we're attempting to locate the dummy who is at 90.00001% acceptance on a Sunday night who foolishly left his phone on, don't worry, we'll find one, he's out there somewhere"


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## JimS

One at a time until a driver accepts. Closest driver sees a junkie, passes it on to the next fool.


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## Adieu

JimS said:


> I bit. This morning I had one 25 minutes away. I took the damn ride. Took a lady 2.5 miles who was late to her Waffle House job.  2 stars and a note saying to be considerate to drivers.
> 
> I think I kinds enjoyed that. I'm going to keep doing that for a month. Take ALL pings regardless of when and for rides that are less than 20% of the drive time to get to them start with a 1*. They will, in turn, receive my uncompromising 5* service. Because it will be their last ride with me.


*facepalm*

Jim there's better ways of denying pings

...if you wanna know how, go to a staging area by a venue for an event (NOT official....think the mickeyDs lot nearby) and watch other Lyft drivers

fiND ONE HOLDiNg TWo PHONeS

Watch carefully what he's doing.

Not the ones sitting logged off on uber, but a Lyft who is actively doing something in two phones

That's all I'm gonna say


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## MiddleClassedOut

Oh, just tell us....

I have two devices, I'd like to try this - if I knew what you were doing.

If you are logged into both devices, you will get the request on both, as far as I remember from the one time I may have accidentally done this, and both will update, so if you accept it on one, it'll be accepted on the other...I don't get it. Guess I'll just have to play around.


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## JimS

That's great advice if I were in a huge market like Orange County or any major metropolis.

I'm in tiny Savannah, Georgia. I take what I can get. I don't mind the 25 minutes so I can downrate a pax so I don't have to get them again.

Our population is only around 350,000 in our entire market. Maybe 500,000... But that's it. SO much dead, open space in between major service areas. Yet, there are over 3,000 Uber drivers and closing in on 500 Lyft drivers in our market.


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## Adieu

MiddleClassedOut said:


> Oh, just tell us....
> 
> I have two devices, I'd like to try this - if I knew what you were doing.
> 
> If you are logged into both devices, you will get the request on both, as far as I remember from the one time I may have accidentally done this, and both will update, so if you accept it on one, it'll be accepted on the other...I don't get it. Guess I'll just have to play around.


You're right

Second phone is in pax mode checking surge, that's how you spot a cherry picker

As to the many MANY strategies for enacting the cherrypick, gonna have to learn those in person

Chances are said person is optimizing pingage, getting FAR more pings than you, far CLOSER pings than you, driving FAR fewer of them and never at a loss, and yet....Has high acceptance and no trouble getting guarantees and PDBs to pay out

Buy somebody lunch, fill a guarantee or two for em, look very pitiable, or perfect then puppy dog eyes....cuz nobody is going to just magicly summarize ALL the tricks of the trade for the gazillion noobs and handful if corporate lurkers on here.

Also, last guy I showed a few tricks bought me beer, helped me out with ride count multiple times, and even REALLY really wanted to pay my way into some questionable "always happy endings" type establishment (I passed on that one though) ....I didn't ask either.

Its just that profit-making skills hold actual real VALUE


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## MiddleClassedOut

Yeah yeah, cherry picking is easy, I do that routinely. Now if you have a separate passenger account, I can see doing a few more things to help with acceptance rate. Can't see I can figure out a way to deny pings though...Airplane mode doesn't work, it's still active.


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