Deactivation rarely comes out of nowhere from the platform's side. It's usually a threshold getting crossed, one the driver often didn't realize was being tracked closely, rather than a single dramatic incident. Knowing what those thresholds generally are is the difference between managing them deliberately and finding out about them the hard way.
Acceptance rate
Platforms track how often you accept offers versus decline or ignore them. A low acceptance rate can affect your standing and, in some cases, your eligibility for certain incentives or programs, though it's less commonly a direct deactivation trigger on its own. It's worth knowing your platform's specific policy here rather than assuming declining freely carries no consequence at all.
Cancellation rate
This one matters more directly. Accepting a ride and then cancelling it, especially repeatedly or after the rider is already waiting, is tracked separately from simply declining an offer you never accepted in the first place. A pattern of high cancellations after acceptance is a much more common deactivation trigger than a low acceptance rate, because it affects riders who were already counting on the trip.
Rating thresholds
Every platform sets a minimum average rating, and falling below it, sustained over enough trips, not just one bad rating, can trigger a review or deactivation. The specific threshold varies by platform and sometimes by market. What often surprises drivers is that a handful of low ratings early on, before you've built up a large trip history to average them against, can have an outsized effect compared to the same low ratings once you have hundreds of trips behind you. See DriveLens's guide to how rider ratings actually affect you for more on how that averaging works.
Safety and policy violations
Separate from the numeric thresholds above, platforms deactivate for policy violations reported by riders, ranging from safety concerns to conduct complaints. These reviews don't always follow the same predictable pattern as an acceptance or cancellation rate dropping below a line, which makes them harder to manage proactively beyond simply following the platform's stated conduct policies.
The practical takeaway
Most of what actually trips deactivation is trackable if you're paying attention: cancellation patterns, rating trends over time, and staying current on each platform's specific policies rather than assuming they're all the same. The drivers who get blindsided are usually the ones who never looked at their own trend until the platform's message did it for them.