Ride share programs sued over sexual assaults
Today, the NY Times reported that over 3000 sexual assaults were reported in US rides last year. Lyft has reportedly been sued by 55 women to date, for sexual assaults committed through their service. Both services screen their drivers for criminal backgrounds and persons required to register as sex offenders are not allowed to drive for either company.
Both ride share programs point out that their companies provide millions of rides per day, and in 99.9% of cases nothing remarkable happens. Still, news reports will focus on and inevitably legislative policy will target the extremely rare occurrences that barely ever happen.
Yesterday, Uber published it’s US Safety Report (you can read the executive summary here). Among other information, it provided statistics for sexual assaults and traffic crashes.
You can chose to spin the statistics the way the New York Times and the articles from earlier this week about dating apps did, and say that as a result of motor vehicle accidents during Uber rides there were 107 total fatalities in 2017 and 97 in 2018. That might be factually correct, but when taken in the context of another fact; “this year, nearly 4 million Uber trips happened every day in the US—more than 45 rides every second”, those stats seem pretty low.
To quantify the “problem”, rides where serious incidents occurred (such as sexual assaults or accidents in which injuries were sustained), accounted for 3/10,000ths of 1% of all rides. Because of this 0.0003% chance, you will now have people going to their legislators and asking them to create unnecessary new laws.The media could have just as easily reported that 99.9997% of all rides went perfectly. Couldn’t the NY Times have reported just how safe Uber and Lyft are instead of creating hysteria?
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I read the Uber report and was amazed at how low the rates were. In addition, in that particular report it is important to realize in some cases these were not acts by the Uber driver but the passengers where the driver reported it.
As in most cases where the hysteria by the media, certain groups, and some politicians will be way overblown and misrepresented, most likely legislation will be passed with pats on the back all around. Of course they will never return to the issue to find they have made no difference in the matter whatsoever and like most legislation of this type, have just made it worse.
I have two final thoughts. One, what do the statistics for traditional Taxi services look like. If they are the same or worse and I highly doubt their better, why hasn’t there been a demand for legislation before now. Which brings me to thought two; who would benefit from this legislation? Sellers of taxi medallions where prices have fallen drastically over the last few years and Lawyers, who are always looking for a new group of people to represent and make money from.
I read that article on Taxi medallions in one of my magazines last year. Some of those guys have been drivers for 40 years and were going to retire on selling their medallions. Now they said you cannot give them away.
NPR aired a segment on this – pointing out that sexual assaults happen everywhere and that the statistics for them in uber are no worse. There are also a number of murders related to Uber – seems like a better story as we should all be careful regardless of gender. Women already know their vulnerability – why fear monger this? Oh, right, to give more money to those who pretend to care about our safety like ICAC, and MECTF, and LE who harass people required to register.
I actually applaud this article in some fashion, as it shows a large amount of sexual assaults happening not by child sex offenders, but by everyday people instead. It draws heat from us to some degree, but will try and put tougher laws into effect anyway. It’s not like they weren’t going to be planning tougher laws to begin with, it’s just now they have a new target to go after is all.
That statistic shows that 100% of sexual assaults by Uber drivers are committed by people not on the RSO registry. That fact should be presented. Perhaps people on the registry would be extra careful not to go back to jail. Uber may be able to make riders safer by hiring RSOs. At first this may sound silly but consider most RSOs never sexually assaulted anyone in the first place. Consider those who purchased a used computer that had CP on it and never opened any of the files as verified by computer forensics. He has 20 years of limousine and school bus driving experience with no incident. Uber’s policy is automatically eliminating low risk drivers and allowing unknown drivers instead. The unproven driver is the bigger risk.
Some people are demanding a world where everyone will always be 100% safe. It is not going to happen.
“This is a chilling example of percentages being inconsequential,” writes one NY Times commenter. “Sexual crimes against Uber passengers might be a fraction of one percent, but there are still more than three thousand people that are victims of heinous crimes. That’s a huge and unacceptable number…As a woman who frequently travels alone, I will surely re-evaluate my transportation choices.”