I doubt we'll ever get data to support this but I suspect most drivers aren't drivers for very long. A few, who are otherwise entirely unemployable, may stick it out. It sounds like a much better deal than it is, I think most people realize that after a relatively short time.

My experience with doing deliveries was the only people who had been doing it for a while were a: broke as fuck and 2, exactly the opposite of the type of person you might want handling your food.

I drove down doordash for a while. Trust me, every driver knows how much they're getting screwed. You'll never be more class-conscious than having 30+ interactions with people as broke as you every day, and seeing every possible angle of fellow working class jobs. You do it for one of several reasons: you want some tiny modicum of control in your life through your schedule, you desperately need the money and it's easy as fuck to get a delivery job, or you started it for one of those reasons or something similar, got good enough to be ahead of the curve, and it's now more appealing than finding something else. The last one was where I was at.

I had done the job enough that I was making $18 an hour, well above the average in my area, and despite needing to pay for gas and taxes on a 1099a, it was still more appealing to keep control and flexibility over my life than to do something else. I could take days off whenever I wanted, see friends during the week, and coordinate my schedule with my fiancee easily. You're very aware that you're getting screwed, but you choose the devil you know, as they say.

The actually drivers, however, don't realize how much they're being screwed over.

Stop assuming stupidity because a lower monetary class.

Everyone realizes and knows this, you can't do anything about it when you're struggling to feed your family and you just need extra money.