You're almost making my point to you for me if you fully understood things... Uber is a private company and drivers are also private individuals.

There is no mandate (Uber or law wise) for driver to accept an incoming trip. This was literally settled in court. Additionally even after arrival and pick up a driver can end the trip at any time.

I myself have kicked out belligerent drunks prior to their destination and I have started a trip, seen that it was going out of state, and ended it right there.

This is not against Uber's policy in fact berried deep in it's driver agreements it encourages solicitation of additional fees by the driver to cover the increased cost.

For me the "economics" and my time did not match up with the trip so I simply ended it.

Now I don't know how the riders felt about it but they should have alerted their driver to such a trip. This is a situation where as the OP questioned: a phone call for destination would have saved us both a lot of aggravation.

Now all of that said I was referring to traveling a long distance to pick a customer up. It's you all collectively the passengers (myself included) who say "Not my fault that you had a long drive to get me".

As a driver I never go more than 8 mins to pick up a passenger unless they are requesting a premium ride or they are paying 3X surge.

For every driver that gets the "not my problem attitude" is another driver who sets restrictions on the distance they drive to pick up.