[baubino]

I only have experience in one city but I know that getting to drive for Uber is much much easier than getting a taxi driving job in the 90s. Taxi companies performed extensive background checks and while Uber claims to do so now, it’s not clear to me that they have really taken seriously the safety problem and that any random person shouldn’t be allowed as a driver. Their incentive is to get as many people driving as possible.

I never said there were no instances of sexual assault by taxi drivers; just pointing out that there’s a real crisis of rampant assault with Uber for which there are solutions that they’ve essentially refused to entertain because they don’t want to take responsibility for their drivers. I’m saying that these companies need to be held responsible for their role in this problem.

[seanmcdirmid]

Taxi drivers were notorious for sexual assaults back when they were the only game in town, it used to be a meme before we called them memes! I wouldn't be surprised that now that most of their business has moved over to ride shares, so has the crime.

Some recent data:

> London (2016): In a rare direct comparison, there were 154 allegations of rape or sexual assault where the suspect was a taxi or private hire driver (including Uber). Uber drivers were involved in 32 (roughly 20%) of those cases. During this period, Uber accounted for over 30% of journeys in London but only 20% of the reported assaults, suggesting Uber drivers were statistically less likely to be involved in an incident than traditional taxi drivers in that market.

That is London, not the USA of course. Who knows what other factors were at play.

For the USA we have:

> Uber (2017–2022): Reported 12,522 serious sexual assaults. This occurred across approximately 6.3 billion trips, meaning these incidents happened in about 0.0002% of rides.

> Reporting Bias: Modern apps have "emergency" buttons and digital trip trails that make reporting easier and more traceable. Historical taxi assaults were often only recorded if a formal police report was filed, leading to significant underreporting.

> Victim Demographics: In Uber's 2021–2022 data, 42% of reporters were drivers and 56% were riders. Historical taxi data rarely distinguished between driver-on-passenger vs. passenger-on-driver incidents.

> Internal Data: A 2024 government report found that while some taxi companies collect incident data, they treat it as internal information and do not share it with the public

> I’m saying that these companies need to be held responsible for their role in this problem.

People suck, and they always have. The only way for 100% safety is self-driving taxis.