Angel Torres was driving down a major Los Angeles boulevard in late 2016 when it happened: Ride requests from Uber and Lyft arrived at the same second. As he looked away from the road to decide which trip was more worth his time, he nearly rear-ended the car ahead of him. “It scared the crap out of me,” Torres says. He was new to juggling the two apps, and was so rattled by the near miss that he started pulling over every time he needed to accept a ride on one app or turn off the other.

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