How many minutes depends on your race, study says. (credit: Lyft)

A study conducted by transportation research labs at Stanford, MIT, and the University of Washington has shown that Uber, Lyft, and taxi drivers continue to discriminate based on the ride requester’s race, with black customers waiting significantly longer for a ride and facing more trip cancellations than white customers. The study took place in Seattle and Boston and required research assistants to request trips pre-selected by the researchers to include a variety of neighborhoods.

The numbers

The study found that black male customers using UberX experience three times more cancellations than white male customers in Boston. In Seattle, black customers experienced wait times from 16 to 28 percent longer than white customers on both UberX and Lyft services.

The researchers weren’t able to study how cancellations affected Lyft riders, because the two services offer different information about the rider to the drivers. “A Lyft driver sees both the name and a photo of the passenger prior to accepting or denying a ride, while UberX drivers see this information only after accepting a request,” the researchers wrote. “We find no effect on cancellations for African-American riders of Lyft because, we surmise, that given that names and photos are visible to the driver prior to acceptance, any discrimination occurs prior to accepting the initial request.”