An Uber ride that should’ve taken 23 minutes became a nightmare — and she’s not alone: Incidents every 8 minutes
In May 2021, an intoxicated Oklahoma woman called an Uber to take her home from her niece’s engagement party. Although the ride should have only taken 23 minutes, when she woke up hours later, she wasn’t home, but seated behind the steering wheel of a strange car, with her underwear in her purse and her jeans on inside out.
Her mind blurred with confusion and her body covered in bruises, she went to the hospital and was given a sexual assault examination, according to a civil lawsuit against Uber and the driver, seen by The Independent.
Authorities charged the driver, Timothy Alexander Greene, in June 2021. A jury convicted him of sexual battery two years later, court records show, and he is serving a 10-year prison sentence.
The woman’s horrifying assault in a ride-share vehicle is far from an isolated incident.
“Especially with solo female passengers, this is a huge problem in the industry,” Jim Mitchell, one of the attorneys representing the Oklahoma woman, told The Independent.
“Safety is a core value at Uber, and we have invested billions of dollars and countless hours to reduce safety incidents during trips, particularly when it comes to sexual misconduct and assault,” the company said in a statement on its website.
Across the country, passengers have shared claims of misconduct that took place in Uber rides. In Utah, a woman on her way home was subjected to unwanted touching. In California, a driver touched himself as a female passenger vomited. In Texas, a 20-minute ride turned into a five-hour ordeal and an alleged rape at a motel.
While Uber touts its safety record — and the company has implemented a string of features to protect passengers and drivers since its inception — allegations detailed in thousands of legal cases, internal company documents, and stories on social media underscore that staying safe in ride-shares is still an issue.
Uber received reports of sexual misconduct every eight minutes from U.S. riders from 2017 through 2022, documents first reported by The New York Times revealed this week. Over six years, that totaled more than 400,000 Uber trips in the U.S. resulting in reports of sexual assault and sexual misconduct, according to the report.
Uber’s 2022 safety report disclosed 12,522 sexual assault and misconduct reports over the same time period. The tech company addressed the large discrepancy in a statement posted on the company website Wednesday after the Times published its report.
The “vast majority” of the hundreds of thousands of misconduct reports were “less serious and non-physical in nature,” like flirting or staring, Hannah Nilles, Uber’s Head of Safety for the Americas, wrote.
Most of these 400,000-plus reports have not been subjected to a “rigorous” process that vets allegations and weeds out false reports made “with the goal of getting a refund,” Nilles continued. Uber claims that 99.99 percent of trips end without any issue. Roughly 0.006 percent of the 6.3 billion trips in the U.S. in the six-year span ended with a sexual misconduct or assault report, according to Nilles. The most serious reports accounted for 0.00002 percent — or 1 in 5 million trips — she said.
The vast majority of sexual misconduct reports between 2017-2022 were made by female drivers or riders. Women represented 89 percent of survivors, according to the company’s 2022 safety report.Uber has not released a safety report since.The Independent has asked the company why this is the case.
Uber identified other patterns in the sexual assault report data, according to internal documents seen by the Times. Incidents tended to occur late at night and on weekends with pick-ups near bars.
