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The filing states that while the company has acknowledged the “sexual assault crisis” in recent years, it has “failed to implement basic safety measures necessary to prevent these serious sexual assaults, which continue to occur to this day.”
Additionally, the civil action suit mentions Uber’s 2014 implementation of a Safe Rides Fee, in which it began charging riders an extra dollar per trip “to ensure the safest possible platform for Uber riders and drivers.”
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Uber drivers and Uber split the fare Uber charges riders for the riders' trips; however, the suit states that drivers did not split the Safe Rides Fee with the company, resulting in “pure revenue for Uber.”
“Uber’s whole business model is based on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern – growth was, at the expense of their passengers' safety,” Adam Slater, Founding Partner of Slater Slater Schulman LLP, tells PEOPLE in a statement.
“There is so much more that the company can be doing to protect riders: adding cameras to deter assaults, performing more robust background checks on drivers, creating a warning system when drivers don’t stay on a path to a destination,” adds Slater. “But [Uber] refuse[s] to, and that’s why my firm has 550 clients with claims against Uber and we’re investigating at least 150 more.”
A spokesperson for Uber said in a statement to PEOPLE that “sexual assault is a horrific crime and we take every single report seriously.”
“There is nothing more important than safety, which is why Uber has built new safety features, established survivor-centric policies, and been more transparent about serious incidents,” the statement continued. “While we can’t comment on pending litigation, we will continue to keep safety at the heart of our work.”
Last month, Uber released its secondsafety report, which showed it received over 3,800 reports of the five most severe categories of sexual assault in 2019 and 2020, ranging from “non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part” to “non-consensual sexual penetration,” or rape.
In 2020, Uber announced it would “expand sexual misconduct and assault education to all US drivers,” partnering with RAINN, the nation’s largest sexual violence organization, “to design this program.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go torainn.org.
source: people.com
