⚠️ Warning: This story contains details about sexual assault that may be disturbing.
I know two women who were raped by an Uber driver. That’s not hearsay or a story I read online. They trusted the ride, believed the app was safe and paid the price in the most horrific way possible.
Now, The New York Times (paywall link) has just uncovered something you need to know: Between 2017 and 2022, Uber got a report of sexual assault or misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes, based on sealed court records, despite the company publicly claiming such incidents were vanishingly rare.
Yes, you read that right, every eight minutes. The court documents show 400,181 trips linked to sexual misconduct in five years. Women are almost always the victims.
Publicly, Uber brags about safety
They say 99.9% of rides happen without incident. Internally, they studied the demographics and patterns like late-night pickups near bars, intoxicated passengers and low-rated drivers with past complaints.
They even tested tools to make rides safer: pairing women with female drivers, adding in-car cameras and using smarter ride-matching. But they didn’t roll them out widely.
Why not?
The shocking truth
Because it might cost too much, slow down growth or upset the way they classify drivers as “independent contractors,” not employees. That saves Uber a fortune in benefits, overtime and supervision, but it also means less oversight and accountability.
Uber’s documents show many attacks follow predictable patterns. They could have warned people. They could have stopped some of these assaults. Instead, they stayed quiet.
Rideshare rules
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