How to stay safe when taking Uber or Lyft

SEATTLE TIMES

Last December, a Seattle woman was raped in White Center when she got into the car of a man she thought was an Uber driver.

Hers isn’t the only such story. In April, University of South Carolina student Samantha Josephson got into a car she thought was her Uber and was killed by its driver. In Las Vegas, a woman jumped out of a moving car to escape a threatening driver who also turned out to be phony. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a fake driver took photos of female passengers while they were unconscious.

But these kinds of incidents don’t only involve people pretending to be rideshare drivers. More than 3,000 sexual assaults happened during actual Uber rides in the United States last year, according to a a long-awaited safety study released Thursday by the company. read more »

U.S. lawmaker says Uber must take action after disclosing sexual assault reports

REUTERS

The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee urged Uber Technologies Inc to take action after the company disclosed on Thursday it received over 3,000 reports of sexual assault related to its 1.3 billion rides in the United States last year.

Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, on Friday praised Uber for releasing the information, but said Uber and other companies must do more “to establish formal policies, training and reporting structures.”

“As a country, we must ensure safety is a priority, and make it clear that sexual assault and harassment will not be tolerated anywhere, no matter where it occurs,” he said. read more »

The Gig Economy’s Sexual Misconduct Problem, and How to Fix It

NEW YORK TIMES

Uber has released its long-awaited safety report, detailing sexual assaults, fatal physical assaults and motor vehicle fatalities in the United States. The results on sexual assault are disturbing: nearly 6,000 incidents in 2017 and 2018 combined, ranging from “nonconsensual touching” to rape.

Though most of the reported rape victims were riders, Uber drivers were victims of other types of sexual assaults at roughly equal rates as riders. And Uber has finally acknowledged the risks its drivers face, saying in its report that they “have a right to have their experiences told, and we have a responsibility to stand with them so that we can create the safest possible environment for drivers and their passengers.”

The assaults on drivers highlight what can happen when a workplace is highly fluid and work occurs in a private vehicle, where worker and client don’t know each other’s full names. In my research I’ve heard countless tales of sexual assault, harassment and uncomfortable experiences in the gig economy. After interviewing nearly 80 on-demand workers for a book, I can vouch that the statistics in the Uber report don’t tell the whole story of what drivers face in their jobs. Sexual misconduct is likely underreported at Uber — and in the rest of the sharing economy. read more »