What no one ends up paying for when incentives are aligned however, is taking the tourist from the airport on an unsolicited tour of the city rather than directly to their destination.

Or the taxi driver who accidentally ends up on that one road that always has an idiot who caused a fatality when there were others that were less busy at the time.

_That_ is what most people are worried about, not having to reimburse someone for an unforeseen circumstance.

Amortizing the cost of rare negative pricing events across all trips seems a much better model to me. I'd personally choose that option every single time.

The time-and-distance model asks me to learn average wait times, approximate route information, and consider potential worst case outcomes for both time and distance. It also requires me to police the route the cab driver is taking to ensure they aren't taking advantage of me. And I need to do all of this in every city I visit.

The upfront model asks me to be able to compare prices between different offerings (a skill I already have), and doesn't change at all between cities.