Study Finds Racial Discrimination by Uber and Lyft Drivers

Drivers for Uber Technologies Inc. in Boston canceled rides for men with black-sounding names more than twice as often as for other men. Black people in Seattle using Uber and Lyft Inc. faced notably longer wait times to get paired with drivers than white customers. The findings come from a study published on Monday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Washington.

"In many ways, the sharing economy is making it up as they go along," said Christopher Knittel, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an author of the study. "A lot of this is a learning process, and you can't expect these companies to have everything perfect right out of the gate."