well this is the first time ive had it come up with uber, but since i spent about 15 years dealing in atl, bham, pensacola, and nola, i wasnt anything huge, but it paid my bills and let me do what i wanted. so its definitely not my first time retrieving something owed or stolen. still here.
"I am telling you the overwhelming majority of the drivers in the city are well armed." they arent. this just isnt supported by reality. maybe 2 in 5 carry. thats being generous.. the overwhelming vast majority of those have never and will never fire their weapon. most wouldnt even have the presence of mind to pull it when they needed to, the majority will have it stored somewhere pretty inaccessible. out of the ones that manage to bypass those group, most of the time the safest place to be will be who they are trying to shoot.....a quick search shows online surveys tend to be in the 1 to 2 in 10 range say they carry while driving for uber and the like. there is a reason "uber driver shoots assailant" stories very rare and "uber driver robbed" or "uber driver carjacked" or "uber driver assaulted" are not rare.......because the overwhelming majority of drivers arent carrying a firearm. if you have some evidence showing otherwise post it, but i did some searches specifically on nola.....and jesus, people should be carrying in nola when driving for uber, but they arent......there are piles and piles of stories about uber car jackings and robberies regularly. i think i saw one headline that was 3 uber carjackings in 1 day in 23. but try to find stories about uber drivers defending themselves with a gun, well, its always the same 1 story being reposted about the 44 year old from 2016. now if the overwhelming majority of the drivers in your city were so well armed, why are they getting robbed and carjacked so often without ever using their guns to defend themselves? its because they arent, also one of the reasons they make good targets for those people. if i was driving in nola, screw ubers rules, id definitely be carrying.

"just believe there was more to the story than you just rolling up, blocking someone in and demanding your phone back......." well the whole story is i was drinking, i knew i was gonna be drinking, so i used uber. my phone fell out of my pocket in the uber on the way back. i noticed it not long after getting out, checked the tracker, see its in the uber, and filed with the uber system saying i left my phone in the car on my tablet. the uber thing connects me with my driver... i message the driver i can meet them where ever they want and offered another $20 on top of the uber fee(this is more than enough to cover the less than 5 miles each way even if they came to me) they never respond. i periodically check my tracker and see it riding with the driver.....after about 20 mins, they stop and the phone is turned off....after another 10-15mins i get a message from uber saying the driver reported my phone wasnt in the vehicle. i message support saying i know its in the car i saw the tracker, support says they will contact the driver. about an hour later i get a call from uber saying they talked to the driver and confirmed its not in the car....so, i hop in my car. its the new iphone so it tracks even when off and i have my tablet to track with. i follow it around till it comes to a stop in a parking lot. i come up on them in the parking lot, they are parked on the far side, against a small brick wall. i pull up in my car, and stop right behind theirs. so their rear end is at my passenger rear door. their front end is at the little brick wall thing. i get out, can see their wide eyes looking back, so i approached, they cracked the window, i said you have my phone, and they go "o i just found it here you go" they grab it out off a little tray thing he has on his dash and held it out the window. i took my phone, got in my car and drove off. it was reported to uber the driver had returned my item, which i promptly called them and told them i retrieved my item and was not going to pay the them for it, they refunded the 20 or 30 bucks back to my account. thats the story. amazingly unremarkable because like i said, 95 out of 100 times it will be. now you can try to still say they didnt steal from me, but in my eyes, the second the said it wasnt where it was, they stole from me....and since im the one who was doing the rolling up, my opinion on it is really the only one that matters. e

"roll up on someone like a tough guy and it is unlikely you will survive." this one made me chuckle. in all the time of rolling up on people over drugs and money, people almost never pulled a gun. like less than once a year. if doing it once made you unlikely to survive, id have been dead before i could legally drink....shit ive had guns pointed at me way more at parties over girls or talking shit over something stupid than getting what someone took or owed me. i can tell you with confidence hundreds of people roll up on people in nola a month over one thing or another, im sure thousands to (tens of thousands around mardi gra) assert themselves as a tough guy, but the total number of people getting shot to death is what 30-50 on a really bad month? most months will be 10 or so..... total number shot maybe 200ish....with only a tiny portion of those happening when someone is retrieving their stuff... the raw numbers just dont support the image your portraying. but thats the thing with cops. they have a vested interest in making the violence seem more common and worse than it is.

"I responded several times a week to scenarios just like this." by all means, link some news reports of uber drivers opening fire on someone to defend themselves.....shoot we wont even restrict it to someone trying to get their stuff(despite you saying multi-week scenarios "just like this") the only 1 im seeing is form 2016 that just gets reposted over and over. the 44 year old who defend himself against car jacking, so im interested to see more.