Uber is going through a lawsuit filed by greater than 500 ladies who allege they had been assaulted by drivers, CNBC has reported. The criticism states that “women passengers in multiple states were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed, or otherwise attacked,” by Uber drivers. The San Francisco legislation agency that filed the suit mentioned it has about 550 shoppers with at the very least one other 150 claims being investigated.
Earlier this month, Uber launched its second security report displaying that sexual assault reviews within the 5 most extreme classes fell 38 p.c from 5,981 in 2017 and 2018 to three,824 for the years 2019 and 2020. However, which may be correlated with the COVID-19 pandemic which noticed a extreme drop in ridership from 2020-2021. “We’re constantly innovating and investing in the safety of our platform,” Uber chief authorized officer Tony West wrote within the report.
However, the legislation agency mentioned that security will not be the corporate’s highest precedence. “Uber’s whole business model is predicated on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern – growth was, at the expense of their passengers’ safety,” mentioned Slater Slater Schulman LLP founding companion Adam Slater. “While the company has acknowledged this crisis of sexual assault in recent years, its actual response has been slow and inadequate, with horrific consequences.”
The legislation agency criticized Uber for lax insurance policies associated to driver background checks and enforcement. It famous that Uber has “opted to hire drivers without fingerprinting them or running their information through FBI databases… [and] has a longstanding policy that it will not report any criminal activity – even assaults and rape – to law-enforcement authorities.”
Uber has but to reply to the lawsuit, however Engadget has reached out for remark. An Uber spokesperson informed Fox Business that it could actually’t touch upon pending litigation, however that the corporate “takes reports of this nature very seriously and has worked closely with advocates to develop a survivor-centric approach to handling such cases when they arise.”
Uber has a historical past of settlements and complaints associated to passenger and driver security. In 2016, The Guardian reported that Uber had paid out $161.9 million in safety-related lawsuits since 2009. In 2017, it confronted a class-action lawsuit accusing it of “giving perpetrators of sexual assault, sexual harassment and physical violence access to thousands of ‘vulnerable victims’ nationwide.” And in 2019, the corporate was sued for $10 million by a lady who was sexual assaulted by an Uber driver, saying the corporate put her in hurt’s approach.
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