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Uber is confronting a deeply troubling reality. Between 2017 and 2022, riders reported incidents of sexual assault or misconduct approximately every eight minutes, totaling more than 400,000 cases in the U.S. alone.
According to internal documents first reported by The New York Times, Uber has a huge problem on its hands. This alarming frequency highlights the dark underbelly of ride-sharing. It proves that despite engineering design and safety updates, serious vulnerabilities persist. Uber’s own disclosures suggest that while 99.99% of its 6.3 billion trips were incident-free, the sheer volume of trips means that even a small percentage represents a significant crisis.
An article from The Independent shares one particularly chilling case involved a woman from Oklahoma who called an Uber in 2021 to return home from an engagement party. She later woke up alone in a strange car, bruised and disoriented, with her jeans inside out and her underwear in her purse. The driver, Timothy Alexander Greene, was later convicted of sexual battery and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Attorneys argue that such horrific cases underscore a broader industry failure. Jim Mitchell, representing the Oklahoma survivor, told The Independent, “Especially with solo female passengers, this is a huge problem in the industry.” Similar accounts from unwanted touching in California to extended detours and alleged assault in Texas paint a terrifying pattern of risk and recklessness.
Source: stockbusters
Uber insists safety is a core value. The company points to features like RideCheck, which uses GPS to detect off-course routes. It also mentions “Follow My Ride,” which allows trusted contacts to track rides in real-time. Unfortunately, these features are far from foolproof. As Uber’s head of safety in the Americas, Hannah Nilles, noted, “No single safety feature or policy is going to prevent unpredictable incidents from happening.”
Critics say Uber’s public messaging downplays the severity of these incidents by lumping minor misconduct with physical assault. While some reports, like unwanted flirting or staring, may not involve physical harm, victims argue that minimizing such behavior risks undermining their experiences and discourages reporting.
At least seven U.S. states now have multi-district litigation ongoing against Uber, with thousands of plaintiffs alleging rideshare-related sexual assault.
Ultimately, this reckoning raises urgent questions about how rideshare companies ensure passenger safety. With billions of rides taken every year, patchwork features and PR statements are not enough. Uber and the broader rideshare industry must confront this systemic failure with accountability, transparency, and meaningful reforms.
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