Rideshare giant Uber has released its long-awaited study on sexual assaults as it attempts to make its app safer for both passengers and drivers. Although the company reports that over 99% of its rides occurred without incident, it studied data from 2017-18 in order to respond to criticism about its reporting practices and to become more transparent to the public about the reality of ridesharing.
Tony West, chief legal officer at Uber, stated in the report that the company partnered with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the Urban Institute to address the fact there was no system to classify reports of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and sexual assault.
West states, “Because we alone cannot meet all of the safety challenges inherent in our industry, we’re already working with law enforcement officials, road safety organizations, and more than 200 gender-based violence prevention experts—including the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, and the National Network to End Domestic Violence—to innovate on new approaches that will raise the bar on safety in ridesharing.”
The two-year Uber study unveiled about 6,000 reports of the five most serious categories of sexual assault. Those include 235 rapes in 2018 alone, along with attempted rape and unwanted kissing or touching totaling 3,045 sexual assaults during Uber trips last year. Nine people were murdered, and 58 more Uber passengers died in crashes.
To give some context to these numbers, there were approximately 2.3 billion Uber trips between 2017 and the end of 2018 worldwide, with 1.3 billion of those trips in the US in the second year of the study alone. Uber contracts with around 4 million drivers worldwide, with incidents involving attacks against both passengers and drivers at about equal rates.
Moira Muntz, a spokeswoman for the Independent Drivers Guild, a New York-based machinists union group representing 70,000 workers, stated, “Violence is an everyday reality for drivers.” Allison Randall, vice president at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, agrees. “The numbers in the report are not surprising because sexual violence permeates all aspects of our society, whether that’s ride-share or Metro or taxi or a workplace.”
The report cites that sometimes, drivers who do not pass screenings by one rideshare company are hired by a competitor, perpetuating unsafe riding conditions. Uber reports that during the study period, over 1 million drivers failed their screening process, with the highest percentage failing the motor-vehicle record check. Those applicants never made it to the criminal check.
Over 40,000 drivers have been fired by Uber since the company implemented continuous screening to ensure ongoing compliance. Uber denies claims that such information is not shared with other ride-sharing companies in an attempt to shelter the company from legal responsibility.
Public data in Chicago alone shows that over 300 drivers were banned from the top three ride-sharing companies (Uber, Lyft, and Via) for complaints of sexual misconduct between 2016 and August 2019. Drug use or possession and traffic accidents also resulted in more 1,100 drivers in that city being released.
The response to the release of the report has been generally positive. As the Los Angeles Times states, “Laying bare the vulnerabilities of a platform that once billed itself as the “safest ride on the road” is a bold step for the company, which has recently begun incorporating more robust safety features. But the true test will be whether that new focus will manifest in a decline in the number of assault or misconduct claims as well as overall driver safety in the next report.”
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/20/20974814/uber-audio-recording-rides-safety-rideshare-lyft
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2019-12-07/uber-sexual-assault-death-safety
