Outrageous Number of Sexual Assaults on Uber Rides Revealed

Incidence of sexual assault on women has kept pace with time and technology, and of course with transportation. In a recently released report, an alarming number of sexual assault reports during Uber rides, exceeding 400 thousand over a 5-year period from 2017 to 2022, came out.

The story, originally published in the New York Times (August 6), mentions 400,181 reports of sexual assault or sexual misconduct received by Uber during the five years from 2017 to 2022, making it one sexual assault/misconduct every eight minutes on an Uber ride in the United States. These numbers come from sealed court records since Uber has been facing lawsuits by victims of such crimes. The company chose not to disclose such a high number of sex crimes, a point noted in the story.

In a YouTube short by NYT, posted the following day, some of the key details learnt by the paper were shared with viewers.

The pattern of these reported sex crimes during Uber rides shows that such assaults typically happen during rides at night and on weekends, while they are also common at pickups outside bars. There is an indication that many victims may not have reported such crimes because of shame, guilt, or even fear of retribution by the offender. Thus, the actual incidence of such assaults is likely higher than reported.

Now, what does this concerning report have to do with American politics, specifically President Donald J. Trump? The NYT story noted that Uber had worked on a safety plan for a “women-matching option in the United States” and it was supposed to start in November 2024.

But days after Donald J. Trump was elected president, executives decided to hold off. “This is not the right environment to launch, and we want to take a beat to assess our timing,” an internal document read.

How Trump’s victory connects to the company’s women-safety plan is not clear. But Uber does seem to have put their political reaction to the November 2024 election over their safety measures for female passengers and drivers. From the information available online, Uber seems a left-leaning company. According to Open Secrets, the nonprofit that tracks campaign finances and lobbying, Uber (the individuals working or affiliated with the company) has donated four times more the amount to elect Democrats than it did toward Republican candidates. The blog 7×7 Experience cited Open Secrets to report:

Uber has given more than 480K to the Democratic Party and nearly 120k to the Republican Party.

The breakdown of Uber’s political donations show that in the 2024 election cycle, the Uber-affiliated donations for Kamala Harris’ campaign stood at $232,000 as against those for the Trump campaign, which totaled $68,000 (amounts in rounded-up figures). The company poured millions of dollars early last year in California with big checks written in support of radical leftist governor of the state, Gavin Newsom, while having supported his re-election campaigns in the past.

In addition, Uber’s Iran-born current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has a history of opposition to Trump’s pro-American immigration policies and has contributed to the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, in their election campaigns.

It is reasonable to infer that, at the end of the day, Uber is a business that puts its financials and reputation at the top of its priority list. And withholding the real number of sex crimes from the public served its own business interests. Feminists have already called out the company for enabling such offenses against women. In the words of Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), Uber must “end rape in its business, not enable it.”

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