Dara Khosrowshahi had a problem. His name was Travis Kalanick.

That, of course, was nothing new. When Khosrowshahi took over as chief executive of Uber in 2017, he became the best-compensated janitor in Silicon Valley, with a mandate to clean up the mess left by the company's exiled founder. But this time, in mid-April, Khosrowshahi faced a Travis headache that lay in the future.