I get that that's a concern for the driver, but that's a risk you take when you serve the public. Should the driver be allowed to refuse people with infants because the infant might throw up in the car or their diaper might leak? Should they be allowed to refuse drunk people? Sick people? Where does it stop? If you serve the public, serve all the public, or don't do it at all.
That's the fun of these service economy start-ups. When you run a hotel and a dog tears up the room, you can off set repair costs with a number of other profitable rooms. If you are the owner operator and your vehicle goes out of commission, what is the offset?
One possibility would be for drivers to negotiate with Uber to provide some kind of insurance to cover cleaning costs and downtime for specified incidents, similar to how AirBnB provides insurance to cover if a guest tears up your apartment. Whatever the solution is, this is a cost of doing business that should be borne by the business, not by disabled people and other members of the general public.
