Uber is dealing with a lawsuit filed by greater than 500 girls who allege they have been assaulted by drivers, CNBC has reported. The criticism states that “girls passengers in a number of states have been kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed, or in any other case attacked,” by Uber drivers. The San Francisco legislation agency that filed the swimsuit mentioned it has about 550 purchasers with at the very least one other 150 claims being investigated.
Earlier this month, Uber launched its second security report exhibiting that sexual assault studies within the 5 most extreme classes fell 38 % 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 continually innovating and investing within the security 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 entire enterprise mannequin relies on giving individuals a secure trip residence, however rider security was by no means their concern – progress was, on the expense of their passengers’ security,” mentioned Slater Slater Schulman LLP founding companion Adam Slater. “While the corporate has acknowledged this disaster of sexual assault in recent times, its precise response has been gradual and insufficient, with horrific penalties.”
The legislation agency criticized Uber for lax insurance policies associated to driver background checks and enforcement. It famous that Uber has “opted to rent drivers with out fingerprinting them or operating their info by way of FBI databases… [and] has a longstanding coverage that it’ll not report any felony exercise – even assaults and rape – to law-enforcement authorities.”
Uber has but to answer the lawsuit, however Engadget has reached out for remark. An Uber spokesperson informed Fox Business that it might’t touch upon pending litigation, however that the corporate “takes studies of this nature very severely and has labored carefully with advocates to develop a survivor-centric method to dealing with such instances after they come up.”
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 bodily violence entry to 1000’s of ‘weak 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 manner.