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Re:

Uber CEO’s “Behavioural Patterns” Remark Was About Driver Trip Targeting—Not Proof of Personalized Passenger Fares

Dara Khosrowshahi’s “behavioural patterns” comment concerned targeting trips to drivers—not proof that Uber sets each passenger’s fare from personal history. Uber says upfront prices use aggregated demand signals and exclude individual rider and device data, while UK research reports driver and passenger effects with important causal limits.
From TheFinanceBase Team5 min to read
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Short answer: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s February 2024 comment about “behavioural patterns” described how Uber targets particular trip offers to particular drivers. It was not, by itself, an admission that Uber calculates each passenger’s fare from that rider’s personal history. Uber’s public statements say passenger pricing uses marketplace conditions and aggregated trip patterns, while excluding individual rider and device details. Those are company claims, not a complete independent audit of Uber’s live systems.

What Khosrowshahi actually said

On Uber’s 7 February 2024 investor call, Khosrowshahi described a change from flat time-and-distance calculations to “point estimates for every single trip based on the driver.” He then referred to “targeting of different trips to different drivers based on their preferences or based on behavioral patterns that they’re showing us,” ending with the aim of offering “the right trip at the right price to the right driver.” The quotation is reproduced in the 2025 FAccT paper Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It.

The subject of that passage is driver-side work allocation: which driver is shown which trip and on what terms. It does not establish that a passenger’s individual behaviour sets that passenger’s fare. Reports that describe the remark as evidence of personalized passenger pricing collapse two separate algorithmic functions.

Three Uber algorithm questions that should not be conflated

Question What the available statements describe Data granularity and caveat
How is a passenger fare set? Uber describes real-time marketplace conditions, including time, distance, demand and destination trends, together with aggregated or city-level trip patterns. Uber says individual rider characteristics and device details are not used. This is a corporate description, not an independent inspection.
Which driver receives which trip? Khosrowshahi described targeting trips to drivers according to preferences or behavioural patterns observed in driver activity. This is driver-specific matching and allocation. The remark does not say that rider personal history determines the fare.
What effects have researchers observed? A UK study reported lower driver earnings, more unpaid waiting and higher passenger payments after a 2023 dynamic-pricing change in its sample. The study cannot isolate dynamic pricing’s causal effect from demand, traffic, workforce composition and driver behaviour.

Does Uber use your personal data to set fares?

Uber’s public position is that it does not use rider-specific or device-specific information to calculate prices. In its 2021 response to the UK Competition and Markets Authority, Uber stated: “Uber does not take into account any rider-specific (including rider personal data) or any device-specific (such as payment method or low battery) information for the purpose of pricing.”

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Uber’s 2025 Algorithmic Transparency Report uses similar language. It says dynamic pricing relies on aggregated, anonymized trip patterns and real-time factors such as time, distance, demand and destination trends. The report states: “Upfront prices are not personalised. Our pricing algorithms do not use information about a passenger’s personal characteristics (like their gender, race, or ethnicity), nor do we factor in details like a rider’s phone model, operating system, or battery level.”

These statements answer the narrow question about the data Uber says it uses for upfront fares. They do not prove that every production model, experiment or internal process has been independently verified. The CMA submission is from 2021, while the transparency report is from 2025, so each should be read as a dated description of Uber’s position.

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How surge and dynamic pricing are described

Uber’s 2022 explanation says prices may temporarily rise when ride requests exceed available drivers in an area. Higher prices are intended to encourage more drivers to move toward that demand and restore availability. In the 2021 CMA submission, Uber described surge pricing as using riders and drivers present in the app alongside historical willingness to pay at city level. It also said route-based adjustments rely on demand patterns and can reduce offered prices on particular routes at particular times to attract rides.

This model can produce different prices across locations, times and routes without using a personal profile for each rider. A fare shown to you can therefore differ from one shown to another passenger because the requests occur under different market conditions. A difference in prices alone does not demonstrate individualized behavioural pricing.

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Does Uber charge different riders different prices?

Different riders can see different fares for ostensibly similar journeys when the relevant conditions differ: demand, available drivers, time, route, destination trends or the system’s current estimate of supply and requests. Uber says those inputs are aggregated or market-based rather than a passenger’s gender, race, device, payment method or battery level.

The public material does not establish that two passengers requesting the identical trip at the identical moment will always receive the same quote, nor does it provide an independent audit of all pricing experiments. The defensible conclusion is narrower: Uber publicly denies using an individual rider’s personal or device characteristics for upfront fare calculation, while acknowledging dynamic, location- and demand-sensitive pricing.

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What independent UK research found about drivers and passengers

A University of Oxford release dated 23 June 2025 describes a study conducted with Worker Info Exchange and drivers. Researchers analysed records from 258 UK Uber drivers and more than 1.5 million trips covering 2016–2024. In the study sample, after Uber introduced dynamic pricing in 2023:

  • Inflation-adjusted hourly income fell from over £22 to just over £19 per hour before operating costs.
  • Passengers paid more per trip.
  • Drivers spent more unpaid time waiting.

The peer-reviewed paper also reports decreased pay, a larger Uber cut, less predictable allocation and pay, greater inequality between drivers and increased waiting in the observed data.

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What those numbers do—and do not—show

The figures describe the study’s UK sample, not every Uber driver or passenger. The authors explicitly say their design cannot isolate the causal effect of dynamic pricing on pay, utilisation and predictability. Changes in demand, traffic, the driver population and driver behaviour occurred over the same period. The findings are therefore evidence of measured changes associated with the period after the pricing shift, not proof that the algorithm alone caused every outcome.

Why the headline sounds contradictory

The apparent contradiction comes from using “pricing algorithm” to mean two different things. Khosrowshahi was discussing a system that decides which driver should receive which trip offer and can tailor that offer to driver behaviour. Uber’s separate public denials concern whether passenger fare calculation uses an individual rider’s personal or device data.

Uber can simultaneously use driver-side behavioural signals for allocation and claim that passenger upfront fares are based on aggregated market signals. Neither proposition, standing alone, settles broader questions about fairness, transparency or the economic effects of dynamic pricing.

What remains uncertain

  • Uber’s public descriptions do not provide source code or a complete independent audit of every live pricing and allocation model.
  • The cited UK study does not directly inspect Uber’s current production systems and is limited to its participating drivers and UK period.
  • Regulatory discussion of personalized pricing identifies potential consumer and competition risks where pricing is opaque or difficult to compare, but historical examples should not be treated as a current finding about Uber’s implementation.

For readers, the most accurate interpretation is to keep the claims in their proper categories: the CEO’s remark concerns driver trip targeting; Uber’s stated fare policy rejects individualized rider and device inputs; and independent UK research reports substantial observed changes while warning that causation cannot be isolated.

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