That sounds so weird to me... What do you mean cars don't have seat belts?!
I can confirm the OP's experience albeit in a different country (Mexico). In some regions, I haven't been in a single street taxi with working seat belts. Indeed, I've been in some private cars without them as well, or with more physical space for passengers than there were seat belts available.
Uber vehicles, though, have always provided those safety features. Some drivers work as both street taxi and Uber drivers (as they frequently cross into or live in regions without Uber but drive people to places that have it), so that quality assurance can trickle down in some cases. It honestly goes beyond seat belts though; a Uber car is more likely to have AC, electric windows, etc. than your average taxi, even in ridiculously hot parts of the country.
Maybe because it was in Chennai, a southern state and not in Mumbai or Delhi.
Unless India? [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/08/uber-exec...
The fact that Uber devotes engineering resources to serving the tiny 1% slice of users who care about having an app that works seamlessly across dozens of countries, at the expense of the much larger number of users with limited space on their outdated devices, is really emblematic of the Valley's out-of-whack priorities.
An app for travel should absolutely prioritize UX and ease of use as you travel, however far away your destination is.
For some, Taxi works well enough and is (perceived as) licensed/trusted/reliable so they don't have a need to use Uber. Others are bit of Luddites, or mistrustful. But I guess friction of Taxi / benefits of Uber just aren't high enough :-/
(Personally, I've only ever used Uber on specific travels; for 99% of my transactions, Taxi has been easier/more reliable. Don't get me wrong, I think Taxi licensing/medalion model is outdated, the drivers have worked incentives, and cars aren't as maintained as well as they could be. But I still normally don't find a benefit in Ubering).
Finally, FWIW, even traveling within country, I've noticed significantly different screens/features/options in, say, Ottawa or Toronto airports and vicinity. So I think overall a lot more people benefit from this monolithic model than may be immediately apparent.
I would imagine that travellers are an outsized percentage of high spenders, even if they are a small portion of users.
Not all customers are equal. And if you build your app or site without knowing that you may well chase the wrong features.
Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the required info (coordinates of where pickup is or isn't allowed, specific instructions message to display, etc.) the same as it receives information about local pricing, location of available cars nearby and so on?
Then there are 100 guys with outdated devices who use UberX once or twice a month to get back home from the pub, probably splitting the ride with their friends.
I bring in more money than the latter group of people.
Uber Pool is no longer available due to covid; but hopefully it will come back as vaccination rates go up.
