Uber Released Their Safety Data From 2020 And It Includes 998 Sexual Assaults Including 141 Rapes
My go-to ride when I’m on vacay has always been Uber. I’ve never felt unsafe.
Well, I mean, I was a little leary when I first rode in one, but it was fine.
BUT, Uber just released their safety data from 2020, and it’s downright scary!
It has me rethinking the whole “shared ride” thing.
If you remember, 2020 was the year from hell — what with the whole pandemic thing shutting down the world.
Even in spite of 2020 being a crazy year when ridesharing was down, Uber still had some eye opening safety incidents.
According to CNN, Uber says they had 141 reports of rape just in the United States.
Yikes!!
In its latest report, Uber said it received 3,824 reports of the five most severe categories of sexual assault, which range from “non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part” to “non-consensual sexual penetration,” or rape.
CNN
I guess the upside is that this number is actually DOWN from the 5,981 sexual assault reports from 2017 and 2018.
Is anyone else kinda freaked out right now?
Now, I guess, when you consider that Uber’s total number of US trips average from 3.1 million to 2.8 million per day, those sexual incidents don’t seem like that many.
Right?
That’s still an awfully big number!
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.
Uber Report via CNN
Those reported rapes didn’t just happen to riders. About 7% of those incidents reported were from drivers.
Get this. Over the two-year period from 2019 to 2020, 15 riders were reportedly fatially physically assaulted.
Uber has become more strenuous in their implementation of various safety measures over the years. It now runs continuous background checks on drivers using technology that watches for new reports.
It said in the report that this feature has resulted in more than 80,000 drivers being removed from its platform to date.
CNN
What do YOU think about these reports? Will you keep using the rideshare platform?