The nearest bridge I'd feel comfortable going off is 2 hours away, but I don't drive. Would it look suspicious getting an uber nearby and then walking, do you guys think? I could maybe say I was visiting my family. Or should I just grayhound closer than uber?
Speaking as an occasional Uber driver, it depends on how gregarious the driver is compared to how awkward you are as a passenger.
Your ideal situation is going to be a driver that's comfortable sitting in silence so you can ignore them and be on your phone or something. You don't have to do much beyond that. In theory, we're supposed to let the passengers direct the flow of conversation, so your silence and short responses to questions should be enough to get you through your time.
In practice, lots of people, drivers and passengers alike, can't stand silence and will try to fill the time with small talk. If the driver is the friendly sort who makes it clear they want to chat for two hours, and you don't think you could hold that conversation (which may include inventing reasons you're going where you're going) without them noticing something is up, you should have them stop you at a gas station somewhere else, end the trip, then get another driver. You might have to do that multiple times.
If you can't afford multiple trip stops and starts like that, your best bet is to feign curiosity about the driver and turn everything back around onto them in the conversation. Ask them questions about how Uber works, or to tell stories about their craziest customer or funny drunks. It's pretty tedious answering those questions over and over, and many drivers will settle into silence if they have to do that too often.
Drivers have a suite of safety tools they can use if they feel unsafe, which includes recording audio and letting third parties, including emergency services, know where they're going based on their phone's GPS. If the driver suspects you are going to do something that might involve harm to yourself or others, they may activate those tools, which could lead to being stopped by emergency services. They may also take a more direct approach and redirect the trip to a police station or a hospital if they feel they can do so without direct threat to themselves.
I don't think it's impossible for you to do, and you can get more direct service compared to a Greyhound. You just have to ensure that your nerves don't get the better of you and signal to the driver what you may be planning, or find reasons to end trips with nosier drivers.
Make sure to tip well if your destination is a very remote one, as drivers will grumble about spending all the extra gas to get back and how it eats into their profits for the day.
Following up on the above with a story I think is fairly germane:
Two weeks ago I picked up a couple of passengers, a man in probably his late 20s, and his mother, from an apartment to another house about 20 minutes away. It became very clear, very quickly, that the man was in the middle of an acute mental health crisis that his mother had triggered, and he was aggressively insulting her and threatening to CTB when they reached their destination. His mother completely failed to show any empathy and treated it like a dramatic outburst, making it clear she'd call the cops, which the young man made it clear he wanted her to do so he could CTB by cop. It seemed like if she didn't do it directly, he would start fights with her and anybody else at their destination until the police were called to force the issue.
As the driver, this put me in a difficult decision. If I did not contact emergency services, I might be held liable for any harm the passenger caused to himself or others when he left the car. If I did contact emergency services, there was a significant chance that the police would arrive and they would happily give him his bus pass if he didn't back down. But it was clear that he was in an acute rather than a chronic suicidal state, the kind for which hotlines are actually occasionally useful: If his mother hadn't been in the car with him to further antagonize him, he would have cooled down and the issue wouldn't have appeared.
In the end, I chose to avoid making those calls until he had left the car. The possibility of legal liability was something I couldn't ignore, and I don't trust that Uber would have my back in the event of litigation. Fortunately, he left the area in another car under his own power rather than make good on his threats, so there was no further risk.
I bring all of this up because these are the kind of considerations the driver is going to have if you make it clear that you're planning something. They may be sympathetic, but they may also find themselves in civil legal trouble if they don't act on that information. In my case, it was so obvious that I couldn't pretend otherwise. Don't give the driver a reason to suspect, and err on the side of caution if you think they
do suspect.
