Well, shit, if this isn’t your nightmare, you’ve clearly never been in an Uber.

Ryan Simonetti, CEO of a NY-based teleconferencing company known as Convene, went on an Uber ride from hell last week in Washington, D.C.. Simonetti, a self-described Uber fan, called for an Uber in our Nation’s capital, and when the taxi arrived, Simonetti noticed that there was a Taxi inspector talking to the driver. The Inspector handed the driver documents and the Uber drove away. The Inspector began to follow them with his lights on.

But the Uber driver says “Don’t worry, he’s not a real cop.” Comforting.

Then the driver ran a red light. Then he took them to I-395, racing down the highway, going well over the speed limit, with the Inspector right behind.

“It was like an episode of ‘Cops,’” Simonetti said. “We’ve all seen the ‘Cops’ episode. This only ends two ways. Either the car crashes or the guy jumps out and runs. And he had plenty of opportunities to slow down and jump out and run, and he wasn’t doing that.”

This went on for another 8 to 10 minutes, with Simonetti and his colleagues begging the driver to let them out or just slow down so they could jump out, but the driver said that if he stopped, he’d get a $2,000 fine. Eventually, they threatened the driver physically: “I physically tried to force his leg to hit the brake. I ripped off his pant leg…. I said, ‘Here’s two options. You take this exit, or I’m going to knock the side of your head in. If we crash, we crash, but you’re gonna kill us anyway.’”

He eventually pulled onto an exit ramp, let the passengers out, and the Inspector blocked the driver so he couldn’t go any further. The driver turned around, went the wrong way up the exit ramp, and drove into Virginia. The passengers are okay and the driver has been dismissed from Uber.

Crazy shit.

I’ll stick to crazy NYC cabbies that speed and curse at you with little abandon for human life, thanks. They may be insane, but at least they stay on the island of Manhattan.

[via The Washington Post]