Raphael Gomes was travelling back to his London home on Friday evening when he noticed his driver was busy staring at his mobile phone screen rather than keeping his eye on the road
A well-known YouTuber was left fearing for his safety when he discovered his Uberdriver was watching videos at the wheel.
Raphael Gomes, 23, was travelling back to his London home on Friday evening when he noticed his driver was busy staring at his mobile phone screen rather than keeping his eye on the road.
The young man tweeted: “My uber driver is literally watching youtube videos as he takes me home #pray for me”.
Known by his YouTube stage name ItsRaphaBlueBerry, Rapahel is a Portuguese-English YouTube blogger living in London.
He specialises in creating music parody, cooking and challenges and is mostly known for his webseries Cooking With Raphael. Some of his videos have more than 3million hits.
Raphael told the Mirror Online he was well aware of how dangerous his driver’s actions, adding he was “really scared” at first.
He told the Mirror Online: “This was taken in Chelsea as I was going home from the hairdresser – it was a very short ride (about 10 minutes).
“At first I thought he could potentially only be listening to music. Then I realised the driver was actually watching some sort of web series on YouTube.
“A full on TV show type of program. I was a little scared at first but the traffic was really slow as it was Friday evening.
“I ended up finding humour in it and taking the pictures.
“Of course I understand this could have potentially been a very dangerous situation.
“Having your driver switching from keeping his eyes in traffic to watching YouTube videos isn’t particularly reassuring.”
He added since it was Christmas he would not be making any official complaint.
He added: “I don’t want to make any official complain about the situation because regardless of what happened the driver was kind and nice.
“And I’m also safe and sound. Don’t want to be the person to ruin someone else’s Christmas.”
But nevertheless his fans were concerned for his safety with one tweeting: “please be safe omg what.”
Simon Dover added: “that’s really funny mate those uber drivers are really cool watching films as they drive”.
The irony of a driver watching YouTube videos when a famous vlogger was in the car was not lost on some users, with one saying: “at least he wasn’t watching your videos.”
An Uber spokesperson said: “We have contacted the rider to find out more information, including whether the video was being watched while driving, which is unacceptable behaviour from any of the drivers that we partner with.”
Uber quickly got in touch, tweeting: “That is absolutely not ok, Raphael. Please get in touch with us so we follow up asap”.
Source: The Mirror