My wife drives for Lyft, she does not have to, she is an extrovert and loves to talk to other people. She puts up with her share of crap, people puking in her van (a lot) lots of drunks, guys hitting on her (usually drunk), you name it it happens. (disclaimer: she drives weekends from about 9pm to 4am in a van for plus size rides (rides over 3 people), so some could consider a lot of this self inflicted on her part, but someone has to drive the inebriated).

She drives to talk to people and make a bit of extra money, it was never meant to be a job to support us. I personally think she is crazy for putting up with all she does. Anytime she is waiting for passengers or going through a drive through (for the passengers) for 15 minutes she makes NO money, because the ride price is fixed (and yes after events passengers will get in the van and one will be outside talking to someone else and she has to wait for them to get in, not getting paid for her time). She tells me all the time, a few riders are really grateful, but most don't care and the driver is just some person they hired (she has hard candy and the large things of bubble gum for riders, a few weeks ago a group of guys stole one of the things of gum, she saw them walking away with it and laughing, $6 down the drain).

There are also the passengers who order the Lyft, she shows up and they are 2 streets over from where they said and tell her to go to a different location. Again, she could cancel the ride, but unless someone is in the same location waiting for a ride she would be losing more time and money.

So i think charging for ride time is fine. If the driver does take extra turns and time for more money you can always give them a lower rating, i am unsure about Uber, but the driver rating at Lyft really does mean something.

Exactly! Uber is offering these people income where they would otherwise be without.

Or Uber is offering the illusion of income and hoping they're desperate enough not to do the math on vehicle depreciation.

Income, not profit.

How does income with no profit benefit the drivers?

It can be a useful way to extract some value from your car without selling it. Say you are between jobs and have a car you bought new. You would like to keep the car, as you know its history, so you drive Uber to "sell" a part of the car until you get a new job.

Not really. More like a way to sell a fraction of your vehicle's value while working for less than minimum wage in some cases. Not a great situation but, you are not paying high interest on a loan that you have to pay back.