It is currently only available to users of its luxury Uber Black services, costing the passenger extra.

Leave it to venture capital to try to make profits off people wanting their driver to shut up.

Uber has been rising their prices enough that now they are nearly at price parity with taxi cabs which, at least around where I live, are notorious for price gouging. At this point there is little reason pick Uber or Lyft.

Currently passengers can use the app to rate conversational skills, so a driver wishing to increase his score may deliberately try to make small talk.

That sounds bloody awful.

My mom is a hairdresser and their booking app has option for silent service as well.

I've not used Uber much but in Taxis the taxi driver doesn't talk to you as long as you don't start the conversation, or perhaps it's just me being and looking like foreigner everywhere I go.

Gee, it's almost like they deliberately set their prices too low at the start to bankrupt the competition, then they jack up the prices. Tale as old as time.

There's a version with talking drivers?!
Greetings from Finland.

Fuck Uber. Use local taxis.

That's usually how it goes for me. I greet them, they confirm where I'm going, and then complete silence as it should be. I love it.

Wait, there are people who don't like silent drives?

To be honest, I'm never sure why the driver wants to talk so much. I guess if they were a passenger, maybe they don't want silent drives either.

Can i select "only talk to me if you have interesting things to say"?

I've had some enjoyable convos with drivers, but I've also been stuck in conversations about the weather or other banal topics.

This is what actually tired me more than driving when I did Uber for a while. I felt exhausted from socializing but probably more so because it was the same conversation each time “how did you start, when did you start, do you do anything besides Uber…”. Ironically my first passenger was probably the most enjoyable conversation I had while doing Uber and we drove over 70 miles to her destination talking the entire way.

Getting an Uber driver/passenger who didn’t want to talk was always the best for me. Not trying to be rude, but I enjoy driving in quiet more times than not, even when alone, I don’t always listen to music or anything on my radio. I don’t get why some people can’t seem to enjoy silence and constantly need some sort of artificial background noise.

The wear and tear on my car and the expensive trips are why I don’t drive or take Ubers anymore. I pulled up the app a few weeks ago to get a lift to somewhere 5 miles away and the trip just getting there was like $20. Paying that much in gas could get me well over 100 miles even in my area where gas is insane.

Funny. Caught an episode of martial law where samo drives a guys taxi and one of the things he encounters is people expecting him to talk when he was not and then he tries talking regularly and people not wanting him to. Seems like its good all around for it to be determined ahead of time. Personally im the type that can go either way unless im like traveling for work or something else and need to concentrate on something while traveling.

Headphones, or tell your driver you're not in the mood to talk. There, I just saved you money vs paying for Uber's "Premium" features...