Uber Received A Report Of Sexual Assault Almost Every 8 Minutes For Five Years: Report

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — About every eight minutes, the world's most popular rideshare app, Uber, received a report of sexual assault or misconduct in the U.S. over the course of five years, according to an investigation conducted by the New York Times.

Between 2017 and 2022, sealed court records demonstrate levels that are far more severe than the San Francisco-based company had previously disclosed to the public, the Times reported. According to the Times, the company set aside safety measures in favor of protecting its business model based on a contract worker labor force.

Uber continues to tout its safety measures.

"The Uber platform was built with safety in mind," its website currently assures.

While the company told the public that Uber was one of the safest travel options, internally, teams of data scientists and safety experts were scrambling to fix the problem. During that time, the company tested tools that were meant to make trips safer.

Among the efforts was a matching algorithm that could pair female passengers with female drivers. Another included mandatory video recording.

According to interviews with more than 12 current and former employees, the company did not require its drivers to adopt these programs. It also didn't warn users about what was happening to so many passengers who became victims of assault.

Until recently, hundreds of litigation records have been under seal during a large-scale sexual assault case against the company.

Between 2017 and 2022, some 400,181 reports of sexual assault and sexual misconduct in Uber rides were reported, court documents reviewed by the Times showed.

Meanwhile, the company had only disclosed 12,522 accounts of serious sexual assault incidents during the same period. In its second U.S. Safety Report, the company said 998 sexual assaults were reported in 2020, including 141 rapes. The company claimed there were 3,824 reports of the five most severe categories of sexual assault in 2019 and 2020, ranging from "non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part" to "non-consensual sexual penetration," or rape, the law firm Slater Slater Schulman LLP, which is representing the women, said in a news release.

Uber has not released any data for the years since.

“There is no ‘tolerable’ level of sexual assault,” Hannah Nilles, Uber’s head of safety for the Americas, told the Times.

“No single safety feature or policy is going to prevent unpredictable incidents from happening on Uber, or in our world,” Nilles said.

The company has since introduced a variety of safety tools, including GPS tracking, optional in-app audio recording and an emergency button to connect with 911 services.

All potential Uber drivers must complete a background check process, which checks motor vehicle records and criminal offenses at the local, state and federal level. Drivers are screened every year and the company has a continuous background check process to monitor for new offenses.

Despite these efforts, court records indicate reports of incidents have increased in the years the company has not released data.

In 2023, company safety features failed to save a woman in Houston who was raped by her driver, the Times reported.

In December 2023, the woman called Uber at 5:50 a.m. to report she had been raped by her driver. She said she’d been intoxicated and woke up in a motel with him before he fled.

Uber trip data showed she was picked up at 8:53 p.m. the night before for a 22-minute ride that repeatedly deviated, including stops at a gas station and a Motel 6. Uber sent multiple safety check-ins and a robocall, but she didn’t respond, and the trip wasn’t ended until 2:01 a.m. The driver, who had two prior sexual misconduct complaints, was immediately barred, and Uber called the five-hour trip a troubling pattern.

The incident came four years after an Uber driver was convicted of an eerily similar attack in which he drove an intoxicated woman to a North Hollywood hotel, carried her inside and raped her instead of driving her home.

It also came a year after five women who say they were kidnapped, sexually assaulted or otherwise attacked by Uber drivers sued Uber in San Francisco. At the time, a spokeswoman for Uber told Patch, “Sexual assault is a horrific crime, and we take every single report seriously. There is nothing more important than safety, which is why Uber has built new safety features, established survivor-centric policies, and been more transparent about serious incidents."

Uber has long defended its business model, which depends on a fleet of independent contractors rather than employees. By not providing benefits, the company can pay gig workers less than it would traditional employees. But this also means that these workers are largely unsupervised, and they don't have to follow the same labor rules.

“Our purpose/goal is not to be the police,” according a 2021 brainstorming document about Uber’s global safety standards. “Our bar is much lower and our goal is to protect the company and set the tolerable risk level for our operations.”

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE: Uber’s Festering Sexual Assault Problem

Over the last several years, Patch has reported on several sexual assault cases against Uber across the country and in the Golden State.

Just last month, a Connecticut man who was working as an Uber driver was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a teenager, according to the Darien Police Department.

The arrest stems from an investigation that began on March 15 into a report of a sexual assault involving Edgar Interiano, 33, and a 17-year-old victim, police said.

Interiano was initially charged on March 28 with second-degree reckless endangerment, procuring liquor for a minor, and storage of a pistol in a motor vehicle.

And back in 2020, an Uber driver was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a passenger he drove home from the Tustin Police station in 2018.

Amir Attia, a 45-year-old Tustin man and Uber driver, was booked on Wednesday on suspicion of digital penetration and sexual battery, according to Santa Ana police. He was being held on $100,000 bail, according to jail records.

Attia is accused of sexually assaulting a 25-year-old woman in July of 2018, according to police.

READ MORE:

• Uber Driver Arrested After Assault Of CA Passenger
• Rideshare Driver Kidnapped And Sexually Assaulted Child, LAPD Alleges
  
• Uber Sued By 5 CA Women Who Say Drivers Attacked Them
• Valley Lyft Driver Arrested For Allegedly Raping Passenger
• Another Woman Sues Uber For Sexual Assault In Los Angeles
• Raped By Uber Imposters, 3 LA Women Sue The Company
• Uber Driver Charged With Rape Has Criminal Record
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