UBER’S SAFETY REPORT RECORDED 141 SEXUAL ASSAULTS INCLUDING RAPES IN 2020

Fri 01 July 2022:

Uber reported 141 instances of sexual assaults including rapes in the United States. The safety report released on Thursday (June 30) by the ride hailing app service covers the data for 2019 and 2020. This is the second report the firm has released about the safety occurrences. According to the new, 78-page report on safety events, the company received 3,824 safety-related complaints of the five most serious types of sexual assaults, which included “non-consensual sexual penetration” and rape. Approximately 91 per cent of rape victims were passengers, and only 7 per cent were drivers (nearly double that of the first report), CNN reported.

“The change in rate of sexual assault reports over time may have been impacted by a number of factors, including how the Covid-19 pandemic altered usage of the platform as well as Uber’s safety and transparency efforts. But each reported incident represents a harrowing lived experience for the survivor. Even one report is one report too many.”

The current numbers are less than 5,981 reports in 2017 and 2018. Uber said that riders were alleged victims 43 per cent of the time in sexual assault incident reports.

Uber’s overall number of US trips over the two-year period dropped from 2.3 billion to 2.1 billion. The average number of rides per day dropped from 3,1 million to 2.8 million. According to the report, rape incidents accounted for just 0.00002 per cent of all journeys.

During the two-year timeframe, the company also documented 20 fatalities caused by physical assaults, amongst which 15 were passengers.

As a result of Uber’s initial report, the California Public Utilities Commission fined the company $59 million for withholding information for occurrence of sexual assault and harassment. Later in December 2021, the settlement deal decreased the penalties and Uber agreed to spend $9 million for safety.

In contrast, Lyft said in its first safety report that it received 4,158 claims of sexual assaults between 2017 and 2018. Prior to this, Lyft and its shareholders reached an agreement on a $25 million settlement regarding claims and disclosures about the company’s operations particularly in regards with sexual assault and related occurrences.

Uber and Lyft in March 2021 declared that they will publish the names of the drivers who had their account suspended due to being involved in the sexual assaults.

-WION

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