Uber Reveals 3,045 Sexual Assaults Were Reported By Riders Last Year

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Uber Releases Its First Safety Report Detailing Reported Sexual Assaults

Uber released its very first safety report on Thursday, revealing that the app had reports of 3,045 sexual assaults during rides in the United States throughout 2018, with 9 people murdered and 58 killed in crashes.

According to the rideshare company, these numbers only represent 0.0002 percent of Uber’s 1.3 billion rides that took place in the United States last year. Though there’s nothing to really compare the aforementioned figure to, as The New York Times points out, The New York Police Department–which keeps a register of sex crimes and rapes that occur on transit systems–counted 533 in 2018.

Despite the company emphasizing that the number of reported assaults is a small percentage, one of Uber’s top executives admits that their findings were a hard pill to swallow.

“The numbers are jarring and hard to digest,” Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said in an interview with The Times. “What it says is that Uber is a reflection of the society it serves.”

Safety has been an issue for Uber and other similar companies since their inception, with many ridesharing companies allowing almost anyone with a car to become a driver without the screening and licenses required in the taxi industry when they first came on the scene. Since then, reports of sexual assault and murders have become somewhat of a regular occurrence, causing many of the companies to face a growing number of lawsuits over safety incidents.