I believe it simply sets you to inactive temporarily, because you're obviously not picking up rides and you're slowing down the rider matching process.
Which is absolutely wrong. They're deciding, as a contractor, to not take jobs which are not worth their time. As a contractor, they're supposed to be able to do that without punishment. If Uber is doing this, it is a punishment.
There's some balance between punishment and keeping the rider experience pleasant. I don't want to wait 10 minutes to get matched because of nearby lurking Uber Black cars passing on my Uber X request.
If a driver ignores several requests in a row, they're clearly taking a break. It's a feature, not a punishment.
I wonder if surge is activated by a lack of drivers or a lack of drivers who accept rides. My initial thought was that it was based on the number of active drivers, so making a driver inactive would take the pricing higher for the remaining drivers.
Simply? The driver never signed up for those rides in the first place.
Imagine being pitched an engineer job at an engineer salary with company later expanding into haircutting business and ducking your bonus for not generating enough haircuts.
I've never been an Uber driver, but as far as I can tell from my conversations, they do indeed sign up.
My app sometimes says there are no Uber X available in my area, but 5 or 6 Uber Black. How could that be possible unless the Black were not automatically signed up for X?
I believe it simply sets you to inactive temporarily, because you're obviously not picking up rides and you're slowing down the rider matching process.